# What actually happens with a service panel in a flood?



## Dennis Alwon (May 9, 2009)

What is a bad conductor and will not short out a circuit. I took a lamp cord that had a male cap on one end and nothing in the other end. I strip the wires, energized the cord and dropped the stripped wires into a bucket of water. All it did was energize the water with 17V when I used my meter to ground. The circuit will not trip.


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## chicken steve (Mar 22, 2011)

NEMA has an evaluation for water damaged electrical equipment

~CS~


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## Big John (May 23, 2010)

gemiller said:


> ...How did I manage to hold power with my meter base, and main panel submerged?


 Because at low voltages (like the voltage in your house) water is generally only conductive enough to allow you to be electrocuted and not much else.


> ...Why would you cut power to residents in a flood if the only downfall is that the breakers will refuse to reset? I'd imagine there is more to the potential damage than that....


 Water and contaminates gum-up and corrode a lot of stuff in addition to causing insulation failure. So short answer: When everything electrical (motors, lights, heaters, breakers, etc) has this happen to it, there's absolutely no guarantee it will work as designed, and it could create a fire risk if energized.

Killing the power is cheap insurance.

-John


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## gemiller (Sep 21, 2011)

Big John said:


> Because at low voltages (like the voltage in your house) water is generally only conductive enough to allow you to be electrocuted and not much else.


That does make sense, makes me wonder why some houses the power flipped, and some houses you could see arcing in in the windows when the buildings submerged. I got myself a nice zap when I grounded myself to a sump pump when we began pumping the 8 ft out of the house.

Is there any connection between coming in from above the service panel and below(like my situation where it flooded ground up)? The one situation was the water came into a panel in town from the service feed conduit into the panel and the panel actually blew up (looked like a legit explosion happened).



Big John said:


> Water and contaminates gum-up and corrode a lot of stuff in addition to causing insulation failure. So short answer: When everything electrical (motors, lights, heaters, breakers, etc) has this happen to it, there's absolutely no guarantee it will work as designed, and it could create a fire risk if energized.
> 
> Killing the power is cheap insurance.


I agree that killing the power is a cheap insurance, but when half the town needs their power to pump out as to not get condemned I wasn't sure I agreed with the go around and kill power procedure as, although it does need to be done, did not seem to be as big of a risk as they proclaimed.

Also, the inspectors were only requiring the panel replacements, this would not stop a fire hazard as all the equipment was still submerged, or am I interpreting your statement wrong?


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## noarcflash (Sep 14, 2011)

I say all the connections, breakers to busbars will corrode over time, and heat up, and evenutally cause problems.


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## farlsincharge (Dec 31, 2010)

The breakers and busbars will be fine until they dry out completely. The busbars will then oxidize and corrode and the contacts in the breakers can weld shut and not trip free.
Step 1 after our flood was a mix of killing power to the total losses, and changing service feeders and panels in everything else.
Identifying submerged circuits and abandoning them for the time being, running temp power to lights and pumps and moving on to the next.

The POCO was on top of things and pulled meters on anything that was suspected of having the panel submerged. We were doing the above posted methods to restore power as quickly as possible.


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## LARMGUY (Aug 22, 2010)

How does a plastic and metal breaker "swell"? I could see it if they were made from porous materials like wood but they are not.


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