A Day With A Lineman #35
I know, it has been a while right?? Well your one and only Steem Lineman is back with another episode of A Day With A Lineman... Finally!! Things at work have been abnormally slow for this time year. Normally at this time of year things are crazy busy!! Maybe it has something to do with the weather??? Wheat harvest is just starting so the chances of a Tractor hitting a Power Pole just increased dramatically. HaHaHa. Sorry I don’t mean to laugh but it is bound to happen.
With things pretty slow at work, it has given us the opportunity to take care of some small issues we have been having. You know, a little maintenance, fixing things that may seem small now but can be disastrous if left alone for too long.
The electrical grid is similar to a car in that way. A small oil leak in a car engine, if left alone will cause the whole engine to seize up. Just like a small sensor wire that has had the insulation chewed off by a mouse can knock out the power to a whole Substation. This may sound like an exaggeration but If you hang with me on this you will see what I am talking about.
About 3 years ago I was able to build something I had never built before in my career as a High Voltage Electrical Lineman... A Substation. From trenching in the copper ground grid, to installing all the many types of bird deterrent or bird guard as we Lineman call it. I am just going to say, it was a BIG learning experience for me and lots of fun also. This is a photo of it at night. Yep, I helped built that!! Isn’t it
I will continue to attach links to words in this post for those that aren’t sure exactly what I am talking about. That way I can somewhat stay in the right direction... what direction that is.... well I guess we both will find out in due time.
Anyway, I recently adopted the task of doing inspections on a few of our substations. Immediately I noticed we had a bit of a rodent issue. Empty mouse poison treys, and poop everywhere!!! You see once they get into the underground vault next to the control house, they have full access to all the conduits that connect almost all the equipment within the Substation. All these panels connect to the control house where all the monitoring happens.
Access to this vault became easy for the mice because we just added a fiber optic line into the control house via a small vault outside the fence of the Substation. These Voles/Deer mice dig under the vault and cruise through the fiber optic conduit right into the Substation. I am really glad we provided them some great tunnels to run around in and protected areas to nest in. They must be having a blast in there!!
As I was opening up every control box and looking behind every control panel, I soon realized they were getting into the control building. This is a terrible thing to have happen. The vault outside the control house contains all the wiring to control all the equipment within the Substation. This runs up from the vault into the upper portion of the building. The mice simply crawl up the cables and right into the control house behind the control panels.
So first thing was first, clean up the mouse poo and seal up their way into the building. By cleaning up all the poopoo we will be able to tell wether they are getting back in or not. Using some insulating foam board and some thick black Gorilla Tape, it is sealed up really good, and it looks nice too.
Another thing this accomplished was it no longer allowed dust and dirt to blow in. It isn’t open directly to the outside, but it is amazing how much air comes in from there. Every control panel that has a conduit connected to the vault outside the control house, allows some air to come into the building. You really notice it when the heating and air conditioning is running inside the building. It’s has to get air from somewhere right?!
Alright now this is where things get really poopy. No, I am not talking poopy as in a metaphor but poopy as in POOPY... mouse poopoo stinky, caca PooPoo, PeePee stinky nasty 🤢. I didn’t get any photos of inside the vault next to the control house, but you probably wouldn’t want to see those anyway. They just consisted of a huge mouse nest, lots and lots of mouse poo and about 6-8 dead baby mice and a few dead adult mice. We cleaned all that nasty mess out, put the concrete lid on and sealed it up with some super duper caulking stuff.
Now from this vault the mice had free range to access any panel that is connected to any piece of equipment in the Substation. (I’m getting tired of writing “Substation” so I am going to call it what we call it in the field. Simply... the “Sub”) The First and probably one of the most important panels, is the control panel for the Substation Power Transformer. This transformer converts 115,000 volts down to 14,400 volts. If anything happens to this big fella... ummm... No Power!!
Standing outside this panel, I can smell the putrid stench of mouse feces.
When I opened up the door to the control panel, I saw 2 mice run up the wiring and into the steel conduits that are on the outside on the Power Transformer. I had a stinky sneaky hunch they were getting in there but this provided 100% proof that they were.
After cleaning out the inside of this panel, it was time to track down those mice!! Hopefully we can catch them and see if or what kind of destruction they have caused within the conduits. One by one we opened each and every inspection cover on the outside of the Power Transformer.
💩Surprise!! Surprise!!💩
This is not good!!! That is a lot of poo and that means they have been spending some serious time in these conduits. The longer they are in there, the more the Poo piles up. How nice!! Mice are notorious for chewing up wiring on everything! Vehicles, Farm Equipment, house wiring, you name it they chew on it. These little guys can cause some serious damage!! As we made out way around the Power Transformer, opening up every inspection cover and vacuuming them out, I hear...
Hey, They are coming your way!!
My fellow Lineman was on the last inspection cover and he caught a glimpse of 2 mice running back towards me. I was on a different conduit vacuuming it out, so I quickly stuck the end on the vacuum where the mice were running.
Within seconds I felt two heavy objects get sucked down the vacuum hose. Got ‘Em
!!*. After laughing for a bit... more like a while and making some stupid comments to each other like:
We took a closer look to inspect all the wiring... Yes, there is quite a bit of wiring in these conduits. They are used to monitor the pressure inside the transformer, oil temp, coil temp, Amp readings, voltage readings, fan controls, etc... there is a lot. What we found was... not good... not good at all!!
Bare wires in steel conduits = Recipe for disaster
We just kept looking at each other wondering if we should at least try and tape the really bad ones up. Just to give them some sort of protection. You see all it takes is for us to mess with the “right” exposed wire, get it to short out, and... Lights out!! This transformer is heavily monitored to prevent any sort of internal damage. $500,000 is quite an investment that any power company needs to protect as much as possible. Inside there is a Sudden Pressure switch, that when activated, it opens the main switch that feeds the Transformer 115,000 volts, which in turn de-energizing the whole Sub. Lights out!! Kind of wild, how just one wire, and a little one at that, can cause the whole sub to shut down. Granted we have ways to bypass this stuff in case of an emergency but you get the point.
We did our best to put some tape on this one that was off by itself. As for the other ones that were damaged.... I ain’t touching those things!!! They are fine just how they sit.
As I am hoping you can see, the blue wire is completely exposed and all the aqua-blue color you see on pretty much all those wires.... That is corrosion of the copper wire due to the mice relieving themselves on it. Ya, they peed all over it!!
Man, I am sure glad we had the time to do some digging around to eliminate this problem. Who knows what would have happened if we had just kept putting poison out other than a bunch of dead rotting mice everywhere. Obviously it wasn’t working too well now that we can see the damage caused by these little fellas. Now, this damage is only on the portion of the wires we can see behind the inspection plates. What about the rest of the wire that is in the steel conduits?? Or the wire that is in the conduits under the ground that go to all the other panels??? The only way to see that is to pull it all out!! Trust me... that would be an absolute nightmare. Remember, I am the one that put all the wire in there and I don’t want to do it again to be honest. I am just really glad we didn’t find any damage in the panel for the Main Switch. The mice must have not liked it in there too much.
To fix this, it is going to be one wire at a time... tedious work but someone has to do it. We figured it would probably take 2 guys a whole day to change all these wires out on the Power Transformer. Of course we would have to shut down the Sub and transfer all the customers fed from this Sub to another. Which is not a big deal.
We haven’t decided if We are going to do it or contact the manufacturer of the transformer to have them send out some guys to re-wire it. Honestly I wouldn’t mind doing it but then again I don’t like messing with small wires like that, my Lineman Hands don’t work too well with them. Lol
Now this is what is Lineman call true $#!+ work
Well no, it didn’t actually. The next day I was joined by my boss because he wanted to see the damage first hand. There was a little more poo to vacuum up so I got the mini shop vac back out to do a little more cleanup. To my surprise there were two mice sitting curled up together in a tube that holds the end of the hose.
These little guys managed to chew a hole in the bag, then go back into the bag and put through the hose and into this cup that holds the end of the tube.
I walked them a little further away from the Sub and let them loose. Once I seal up that vault on the outside there will be no way for them to get back in... I think??!!!
Well my Steem Peeps, that concludes a Poopy Episode of A Day With A Lineman. Not only are we fighting the birds in the sky, the weather, Farming equipment, cars, and trees but let’s go ahead and add mice to the mix.
I honestly hope that through these A Day With A Lineman posts, you all gain a little better understanding of what Lineman do to keep the lights on for ya.
Steem On
and
Maintenance is Key
To Longevity
And
Reliability
Don’t forget to mention 
