Rental house in Norfolk, older house, pre WWII.
Late July, early August in Norfolk VA, hot and humid.
My electrical problem started as a clogged kitchen sink drain.
Got after it with a plunger but the old pipes under the sink were a little weak and separated at the joint at the P-trap to the drain line. Instantly started drawing about a 1" blue arc.
WTF!!!
Ran out to the breaker box and killed the mains. Did NOT fix the problem. I put a meter across it and was showing 110Vac with the main breaker open!
Called the landlord and he sent out his electrician. He spent a couple hours scratching his head but in the end had not a clue what the hell was going on and suggest the power company get involved and left.
We are now into the morning of day 2 and the power company comes out and spends most of the day looking for the problem. Up and down the block disconnecting and reconnecting different feeds. They even hooked up the wife's clothes iron to the pipes and it heated right up. They bail at about 4:00 pm with no resolution.
That afternoon I had just signed out on 18 days leave for a much anticipated and long planned cross country motorcycle trip to Sturgis by way of SW Colorado, obviously I can't leave till this gets fixed.
We are now into day 3. I'm a little annoyed that the landlord, the electrician and the power company seem to have just left me hanging. By damn, it was working when the pipes were all connected up it ought to *expletive deleted*ing work if I put it all back together.
I acquired all the plumbing fittings to reassemble the sink drains, set up big rubber mats and very carefully connected big ass jumper cables from the sink to the drain line. There was a few seconds of moderate humming and then it all got quiet. Checked with the meter and no voltage, pulled the jumper cables and still dead. Put the jumper cable back and proceeded to repair the plumbing. After that was all I back together I again verified no foreign voltage on my plumbing lines.
I then had to crawl under the house to find the clean outs in the old cast iron drain lines to clear the clog. Under that old house it was hot, dry and dusty with about 3" of fine powdery dust. I was covered in sweat and mud and crawling out about noon when the power company shows up to continue their feeble efforts. I tell them what I had done and that the trouble seems to have cleared. I get a stern lecture about electrical safety and I come back with a scathing critique of their efforts so far including my opinion about their lack of communications when they had left us hanging the day before. The power company guy and I are getting a little heated up when the head foreman/supervisor (retired Navy Chief electricians Mate) and intervenes. I tell him what I had done and explained that if I had been told that they were coming back to keep looking for the problem I might have waited, but either way I was back in business and they could do as they damn well please at this point, I'm gonna go take a shower.
They kept after it for several hours and eventually found the problem. At some point the house had had a slate roof installed. The power drop from the transformer was fastend to the underside to the open eves and a nail had crossed a hot wire and the neutral. When the sink drain had separated it opened the circuit between the cast iron drain pipes and the metal water pipes that had been grounding it all. The power company installed a new drop and re-did the grounding.
The next day I departed on an epic 6000 mile road trip.