Fireworks Anyone

[Reg Mitchell]

I was happy as a new born puppy this morning as i drove over to the shop. The radio blasting Toby Keith and me singing along, drinking a Mountian Dew, and the nice cool air rushing through the rolled down window. What a day it was going to be. I was finally gonna get to fire up my machines and make some noise and sawdust for the first time in quiet awhile. :D
I swing off the main road and up the newly graveled driveway into the front of the shop. Vicky, my lovely girlfriend, was out getting ready to go for some wagon wheels for the fence we just put up...the split rail type, very nice. She was smiling because today was the day we had been working for for a few months.
I pushed open the garage door and stood momentairly looking over the pieces of equipment I had collected, repaired, painted and traveld for over the last year smileing to myself.
Slowly I walked accross the room and, looking back, Vicky was smiling leaning against the garage doorway. I opened the panel box and made sure all the breakes were off before i moved to the disconect. Feeling the pounding in my chest i raised my hand and slowly pressed against the switch....:eek:
First a loud pop and then sparks flew through the air. A little smoke and a slight sizzeling sound....:confused: I jumped back about 10 feet and looked at it. It was quiet. Thoughts rushing through my mine as I walked over slowly ...I reached for the switch to turn off the power ...it wouldn't kick off :confused: . I tryed a cpl times to get it to kick out but it wouldn't catch so i let it turn back on again.....:eek: again flashing pop and a little smoke as i looked on.
Looking back Vicky was stareing open mouth and wide eyed and still standing in the doorway of the garage never haveing moved inside.
What was that she said... all i could say was hell if I know. I reached to flip on a 110 breaker and the lights hanging from the cealing burst into illumination scareing the crap out of me:eek: . They were bright and worked well. I fliped a few more 110 breakers and a cpl 220 breakers and waited. Nothing. I ask Vicky to go into the house and grab the voltage meter which she did and slowly crossed the room to where I was standing at the meter box. I check a few lines and they were fine. Just as i was checking a fellow woodworker arrived and said he saw the lights accross town and though he would stop by.
I told him what had happened and we begain searching for the problem. I had bought a bridgport mill from him and we decided to see if it would work..nothing . After a few minets we noticed ...no fuses:o . Feeling pretty stupid we hopped into the truck and ran to the local box bought some fuses and returned putting them inside. Still nothing.
We started checking lines and thats when we found it.
Accross ph 1 to 2 we had 212. Accross ph 1 to 3 we had 113. Accross ph 2 to 3 we had 110. Didn't make sense. We went to the main box, same thing. Now we went to the disconnect and checked over the top where the power comes into the building. 212, 212,212...just as it should be.:) Next the bottom of the disconnect 212,113,110. As far as I can tell now they sold me a faulty disconect. I can't do anything until Monday except clean out my shorts,:o bit my tongue and only pray when I make the call to cuttler and hammer a man answeres the phone cause someones gonna get an ear full and I garentee it won't be pretty:mad:
Reg

[Alan DuBoff]

Reg,

Look at the bright side, you're gonna have clean shorts soon!

I'm trying to get wiring going this weekend myself. My buddy is returning tomorrow with more parts and tools!;-)

[Rick Christopherson]

The problem would appear to be simple. You have a loose connection (or dropped phase) on the "stinger leg" of your hybrid 3-phase system. Looking at your symptoms, this is the only scenario I can think of that would give you the voltages you described. If you do in fact have a hybrid 3-phase system, then your 120 volt loads will work fine, but your 3-phase loads will not be happy.

The best way to test this idea is to also record your voltages to neutral (not ground). With a normal hybrid system, you should have 240 volts between all three phases, but between phase and neutral you should have: P1-N = P2-N = 120 volts, but P3-N = 208 volts. If your voltage between P3 and Neutral is close to zero, then you lost the "stinger phase", and this will give you the 120 volts between the other two phases and the stinger phase.

Aside from bad utility power, you could check for a loose lug in your load center.

http://waterfront-woods.home.att.net/tempgraphics/y-y-system-lo.jpg

[Chris Padilla]

Cool...nice diagrams, Rick. Sorry for your soiled underwear, Reg!

[lou sansone]

rick
not familar with the 3 phase hybred. looks like a delta with some form of neutral to get 120 volt. Is this a common utility configuration?
lou

[Reg Mitchell]

[quote=Rick Christopherson]The problem would appear to be simple. You have a loose connection (or dropped phase) on the "stinger leg" of your hybrid 3-phase system. Looking at your symptoms, this is the only scenario I can think of that would give you the voltages you described. If you do in fact have a hybrid 3-phase system, then your 120 volt loads will work fine, but your 3-phase loads will not be happy.


Hi Rick...I have 212 comming into the building just fine. But when it comes out of the disconect box it is not 212 anymore. Wouldn't that be the disconect breaker dropping the voltage someway
Reg
...oh yes guys thanks fo the encourgment...It was about time to change shorts anyway...

[Tyler Howell]

Is the disconnect fused??
I seen the burn rather than blow often acting like resistors rather than a link.
I don't think 212 0n a phase is correct:confused:

[Reg Mitchell]

No fuses Tyler. Its just a big disconet like a breaker. And mt power is 208 so I think the power is right?

[lou sansone]

I am sure rick will weigh in on this, but if you are measuring the voltage using a digital meter( one with a high impedance input to be technical) , you can sometimes get fooled thinking that there is "real" voltage there, when in fact there isn't. Do you have a "wiggy" meter? If as rick suggests you are missing a leg, that could be happening at the line side of the main disconnect. You would measure some "phantom" voltage with the digital meter, but once you actually put a load on it, the voltage would drop to 0.

let's see what rick comes up with

lou

[Wes Bischel]

Reg,
Man, what a disappointment!:( I hope it's a simple fix.

Good luck,

Wes

PS I think my shorts would have been filled for sure!:eek:

[tod evans]

reg, check neutral to each leg, should be 120-120-240. check this on the line side of your switch........if this is what you`re showing good if not then find out why.........

next, turn off all breakers throw your switch and check values from neutral on the load side, they should read the same as the line side. if they don`t find out why? here`s a pic of a three phase switch, you should be able to see the connection from line to load when it`s made..
46600


okay, now if all is good out of the switch it`s time to check your panel, if you`re running a three phase panel with single phase breakers in it it`s very important to make sure that the single phase breakers are not hitting the wild(220) leg of your incomming power. check to make sure that the lines running to the panel are in the correct order so that only the three phase breakers can contact the wild leg.......your panel may be different than mine so no picture here..... i`m bettin` that what`s happened is you`ve got a single phase breaker attached to the wild leg.... it should be fairly easy to sort out just take your time and check each circuit methodically.......02 tod

[Rick Christopherson]

Yes, I believe your symptoms still follow a loose connection on phase #3. A loose connection can be difficult because it can show full voltage when no load is on it, but will drop off when a load is applied.

By the way, I didn't realize you had 208 volt service, so I mistakenly thought you had a hybrid system (with a stinger). With a 120/208 volt system, then you have the balanced 3-phase wye system shown in the middle of my previous picture.
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Wait a minute, another thought came to me, but I am having difficulty following the details in your story. I didn't realize this was a new system, and you were powering it up for the first time (true?). Is it possible that you reversed phase #3 with your Neutral?

If you did this, you would see the following symptoms:
Ph 1-2 = 208
Ph 2-3 = 120
Ph 1-3 = 120
Ph 1-N = 208
Ph 2-N = 208
Ph 3-N = 120
Gnd to N = might be 120

In short, two of your three 120 volt circuits would have high voltage on them, but the third circuit (phase 3) would be fine. If I read your first post correctly, you had sparks as soon as your main was turned on, but all of the remaining circuit breakers were still off. This would make sense if you had a short from phase to your ground (which is what would be true for a phase on neutral condition).

You may not necessarily see a voltage between ground and neutral because the phase on neutral will charge your ground rod and elevate its voltage up to 120 volts.

If this situation is correct, then you will want to check your contacts for arcing damage. The same would be possible for any 120 volt circuit that was mistakenly fed with 208 volt power.

[Reg Mitchell]

Hi guys and thanks for the input...I was at the shop this afternoon and called my nephew, which is an industrial electrician, and had him come check the wireing in the box. It seems the 200 am breaker lost a phase...L2 I believe or the one in the middle. I have 212 comming in at the top of the breaker on all three legs but nothing out the bottom on L2. Reading accross the breaker from the power side to the lower side of the breaker it reads 99 volts. If I am correct that should read 0 volts.
Tod the breakers I am useing are set up like this....singel phase 110 is only one breaker. Singel phase 220 is 2 breakers connected together and clamp on to to poles. 3 phase is three breakers connected together and hook to three poles.
Reg....waiting for a new breaker:D

[lou sansone]

yep.. something is wrong with the breaker. as you said, if you are reading line to load on the breaker, it should read 0.
lou

[tod evans]

reg, it just dawned on me you`re running a "y" set up, drawing 2 that rick provided.....my system is a hybrid, drawing 3 from rick......so my comments about paying attention to the "wild" leg won`t matter to you as you have no wild leg.......sorry to be confusing..tod

[Don Baer]

So Reg,
Did ya get er done? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Reg Mitchell]

smiling....yes Tod I have 212 stright accross the top...... I have found out that it is a faulty breaker. It is one its way
Thanks tod and the rest that gave helpful input
Reg