Electrical Nightmare

It was 11:30 last Wednesday night and Kathy finally had finished emailing, long after I was already in bed. As she turned out the lights, there was a loud POW! and the power to the whole house shut off. She was a bit spooked. Now, since it was night time, we didn't need the lights, but the fans, now that's an absolute essential!

So I got out of bed, having been asleep for over an hour already, fumbled through my drawers in my pitch dark bedroom, looking for my flashlight. Once I found it, I headed outside to the breaker panel to see what could be done. The nightwatchman wandered over and asked why I was out in the middle of the night. The two of us tried to flip the four circuit breakers over and over and over and over again, with the hopes that one of them would finally turn the power back on.

Well, nothing to be done now. I headed back to bed and decided to call an electrician in the morning.

Because hiring trades people is a hit and miss proposition here in South America, it's best to hire someone that you know of. I called the pastors of the two of the local Mennonite churches for a reference, but all the ones that they could recommend where unavailable. Then someone remembered that one of the ladies that we work with has a son that is an electrician. She called her son at work and he agreed to come by on his lunch hour and take a look at our electrical problem.

When he arrived, he and his co-worker quickly ascertained that there was no power in the house. Thank you for your observations! How much will that cost? After fiddling around with the four circuit breakers, just like I did, they determined that the main circuit breaker needed to be replaced. Since they didn't have what they needed, they replaced it with two separate smaller circuit breaker and announced that the power should be back on.

There was still no power.

Then they followed the cable up to the roof and discovered a loose connection there. They replaced the short section of wire and reconnected the power to the house and announced that the power should be on.

There was still no power.

They spent the next hour trying various combinations of switching circuit breakers and at one point even climbed in the attic to find the wire that probably was chewed by a rat. No chewed wire. Having exhausted their lunch hour without finding the problem, they said that they would call another co-worker who would come by to help.

They politely asked to be paid for their trouble. But....

There was still no power.

That afternoon, we waited and waited and waited. No sign of the said other electrician. Our co-worker called her son again, and he called his co-worker again, at least twice. In the meantime, the second electrician had made it half way to MCC, gotten lost, turned around and gone home. He said he would try and come by tomorrow.

There was still no power. And it was getting dark.

Our co-worker called her son again and he thought of another electrician he could call. I think we were the 4th and 5th electricians? This electrician actually came with in 30 minutes, along with a jovial side-kick. They quickly ascertained that there was no power in the house. They looked at what the first two electricians had done and promptly announced that the circuit breakers that had been replaced where done incorrectly. They "fixed" the mistakes and announced that the power should be back on.

There was still no power. And it was dark.

We decided to eat and shower in the unit house that evening. Sigh.

After about an hour of fiddling around with various combinations of circuit breakers and checking connections, the electricians announced that they would not be able to finish that evening, but would come back the next day at noon. They temporarily reverse wired our house with a cable plugged into a socket to the building next door. We were able to have basic illumination that night.

The next morning, I was busy hack sawing a broken shut off valve in one of the buildings. When I came back to our house to clean up for a scheduled meeting, Kathy introduced me to an elderly electrician, who had just completed "fixing" the problem in the house. He politely asked to be paid for his efforts and announced that the power should be back on.

Slightly perplexed because this was yet a different electrician that the previous ones, I asked if the others had sent him. He said they work for the same company. I went to check the lights in the house and Hallelujah! the power was on! He told me that he found a loose connection at the street where the power comes to the house, but had corrected it, and everything should be fine. I made arrangements for the secretary to pay the electrician and he left. Wandering back to the house, to take a closer look at the work that had been done, I noticed that the temporary cable from the night before was still attached. Hmmmmm......

That shouldn't be there, right?

I unplugged the cable and the lights in the house promply went out. Darn it!!

What had this electrician actually been doing? Had he not noticed that the house was reverse wired to another power source? Apparently he had just reconnected the cables that the previous electricians had disconnected and assumed he had corrected the problem.

At noon, as promised, the other two electricians showed up to complete their work. Upon hearing that a co-worker had just been there to do some work, they too were perplexed. We then realized that this probably was the electrician that had gotten lost the night before.

This time their efforts resulted in greater success. Within 30 minutes, the lights were on and the circuit breakers were working. They politely asked for payment. This would be the third time we've paid out for one electrical problem. But this time we felt better about it because the lights were actually working! We shook hands and they enthusiastically offered to do any other electrical work that we might have in the future.

Five minutes later, as a I walked past the house, I heard Kathy say, "But the power isn't on!". And I got a sinking feeling in my stomach.

I immediately called the electricians on their cell and had them promptly get off the bus they just boarded and come back. On their return, they determined that one of the original circuit breakers was indeed faulty. They made a temporary bi-pass and said I would have to buy a replacement. But the power was back on and I could breath again.

So in summary, in two days we had 5 electricians with three different opinions of what caused the problem. As it turned out, each of the opinions was correct in some way, but none of them were completely right. The truth is that there were 3 problems that simulataneously deprived us of the blessing of electricity. We had a faulty circuit breaker, there was a short in the electrical line, and one of the connectors from the street to the house was loose. So as each electrician identified and corrected a problem, the remaining problems insured that the lights didn't come back on.

Despite the hassle, and paying three times, I'm just glad that I didn't try and do it myself.
If I had, the lights still wouldn't be on.