“Let’s dig under these electrical conduits and leave 25-30 feet of it floating over our ditch while we install a 40 inch water pipe..”
Is that the thought process that went into this brilliant idea??… most likely they didn’t think at all, judging by what I saw.
After making a couple phone calls I quickly found out that this excavating company didn’t call or notify us that they were going to be exposing or digging around our energized cables. A simple phone call and we would have came out and made things safe… just a phone call…
This time of year the pumping station isn’t running. I harnessed up, got in my bucket, flew up and de-energized both of these underground feeds. Each conduit has 3 cables inside. Each cable is carrying 14,400 volts to the nearby transformers.
I hopped down in the ditch to inspect the floating conduit for any damage. There is a lot of weight in conduit and cable spanning this ditch.
I would be willing to bet that when they installed the 40 inch pipe they were banging up against these conduits. Look how close the conduit is to the top of the pipe.
What do you know… they busted the conduit and didn’t say a word. Gee that’s awfully nice of them to do that…
Looking around I didn’t see anyone from the excavating company. I was gonna make them fix it. You Break it, You Fix It. Instead I called in for help to fix the broken conduit and add some supports to hold the conduit in order to keep it from breaking or pulling apart.
Maybe this is how it got broken…
Someone needed a rest or maybe a thinking chair…
To repair the broken coupler we had to lift the conduit up level. We knew it was gonna be heavy but not that dang heavy. One of us used 2 rolls of electrical tape while 2 others held it in place.
There, that’s a nice water tight repair
Well, Well, Well… look who showed up… someone from the excavating company. First thing he said was,
”Are we in trouble?”
I replied,
“No, but what you guys did here was pretty F-ing dumb!”
Then I explained to him what the dangers were and all it would have taken was a phone call and we would have came out and made it safe for them to work around it. I could tell he felt bad/guilty and he offered up any help he could to assist in fixing it. He said he had some 2x6 at the other end of the job in a dumpster. Those 2x6’s will work great to make some supports. We were going to use some 3 inch conduit but why waste good conduit when the person that broke it has 2x6’s.
To make some supports for the conduit, we cut the end of 2-2x6’s into a point. Drove them into the ground at an angle in opposite directions forming an X, then screwing them together. Before we screwed them together we lifted the conduit up as level as we could. Then we added some more electrical tape just for fun.
We built one for each conduit and taped up a coupler that had pulled apart. We were pretty amazing how these supports didn’t allow the conduit to move at all. I guess it was a pretty good idea.
Before we left I had another little conversation with the worker from the excavating company. I told him not to get all wild when backfilling the ditch and anytime they are working around electrical conduits give the power company a call.
I could play the whole “What if” game forever with this one. All it would take is the rigging on the pipe to fail somehow. Landing on the conduit and tearing all kids of stuff apart. Balls of fire would be shooting from the poles or inside the transformers. I’m just glad there were only minor repairs to do and no one got hurt. Plus I feel as though he took my advice seriously and won’t do crap like this again.
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