February 20th: Electric work
As Juergen opened the cover panel of the breaker box this morning he realised that one of the mains coming in from the outside LCEC (Lee County Electric Cooperative) box has a faulty connection:
The last bit of cable connecting to the breaker box had overheated and the plastic around it was melted already.
During the following days we realised on several occasions that as soon as one of the appliances was pulling too much electricity it was sparking!
Unfortunately aluminum cables had been unsed in former times. They do not connect very well with copper!
Here you can see the "bad boy":
Maria calls LCEC to find out what we have to do. That is the answer:
- We have to task a local licenced electrician with the repair
- This electrician has to make an appointment with LCEC
- An LCEC responsible comes around on that date and kills the power to the house
- The electrician does the repair work
- An Inspector of the city of Cape Coral checks if the electrician has worked to code
- An LCEC responsible comes around and switches on the power again.
This will last about a day, i.e. 8 hours without power!
Fortunately our A/C guy Jon Bour Divine Air and Property Services Inc.
Jon Bour
516 SW 15th St
Cape Coral, FL 33991
Phone: (239) 425-5479
DivineAirAndPropertyServices@gmail.com
knows an electrician:
Leonardo Molina Integrity Electrical Services
Leonardo Molina
16880 Gator Rd.
Suite 108
Fort Myers, FL 33912
Phone: (239) 877-5628
IntegrityElectricFL@gmail.com
.
We are out of luck: it is not enough to replace the main cables with new copper ones but the whole breaker box needs to be exchanged! Leonardo convinced us that an inspector will not accept such an old breaker box (more than 30 years!). It seems that it is fixed in the Florida Building Code that all breakers in a box have to me made by the same manufacturer and that the information which breaker is responsible for what has to be glued to the door of the box!
Now we hope that it will be done asap.
