#289 Hawthorne Florida

This is my third visit to Hawthorne Florida.

On our first stop, we went to a church service and met a guy named Dick Curtis and got to talking. He said anytime you want so you can stay here as we have some RV sites that we offer to the nomads who come through and fix things now and then once a year.

They have five RV sites with full hookups.

When going north or south I would come by and fix things and enjoyed meeting him and getting to know the community. All he could say is please come back soon. That felt good and it was a nice free place to stay but I could earn my keep by just doing handy things.

I didn't have a good number for Dick and when I called, I wasn't getting through to anybody. I couldn't find the actual location of the food pantry on the internet. I just decided to show up and see how it goes. I even left a voicemail for the minister and I never got a callback.

When I land there, I can only hope that I would find Dick and see what’s next. I didn't know what to expect so we just pulled in and parked the rig. I went towards the food pantry to try to locate Dick and I ended up bouncing into the minister. She didn't go into a lot of detail about why she hadn't returned my call but she gave me Dicks phone number. I called and he said it would be fine to stay and he would come by and visit and talk about things.

We got a knock on the door around dusk and it was Dick. He said he had been sick pretty close to dead. He recently had some operations and he was just getting back on his feet. He said something about how he hadn’t been able to eat due to a tumor or something.

He was back on his feet and he was all excited to get some work done and I told him I'd see him the next day and so we did.

I walked over to the food pantry and started looking around at what was going on and they had received a walk-in cooler and freezer. They had received a grant from I think Florida Power & Light.

It was a giant walk-in cooler and freezer and he mentioned it if I wanted something to do it would be great to get those things wired up.

We talked about it and I figured out what to do. He bought some conduit and some wire and I got busy. During the next day and a half, I got them all wired up.

Next thing you know they said Dick was in the hospital. Something about him having bleeding in his stomach so I didn't see him anymore. They said he was okay just mighty concerned for him.

Well, I did the work and was finished. We've been there for a few days and there was some mention of could I raise the main power line from the power company a little higher. I said that's fine.

It turned into about a half-a-day project and I was able to screw in a point of attachment maybe six feet higher than what it was before. It's just a matter of loosening and reconnecting the power lines to a higher point. The concern was that when a big delivery truck came and they would be awfully close to scrubbing the lines and they didn't want that.

Now I will do a technical bunny trail.

There is an event that can occur that you must always guard against as an electrical contractor. If you ever fail to guard against this you will end up owing the customer money. It happened to me once or twice during my 25-year career but it's not something you enjoy.

The wires that are feeding a residential house have two insulated hot wires and one bare neutral wire. It almost never happens but if the power's flowing into the building and for some reason, the neutral wire becomes disconnected the transformer at the pole somehow physically sends 240-volt to all of the electrical outlets in the house.

Appliances like furnaces, ranges, water heaters don’t care there already they’re already at 240. The problem is the things that are plugged into all of the outlets in your home are 120. If you apply 240 volts to these outlets, anything plugged in will have a big puff of purple smoke and explode inside.

As I was doing the tightening of the power line to the building and the neutral popped loose.

The second it happened I knew that the world was going to end for me. I had been the Golden Boy who came by for a visit and solved all their problems. Now I'm going to be the worst person that ever lived.

You can always look back at the proper way to do things and see your mistake. When doing a job like this I could have turned off the main breaker because god knows what could happen. That did not occur to me so I came down the ladder and told the fellow that was standing by, Houston we have a really big problem.

I explained to him that whenever this happens if it puts 240 volts on all the outlets in the food pantry. I warned him when we go inside it's going to be bad. There are several computer's operating, printers, copiers that were most likely destroyed. There are about 6 to 10 giant commercial freezers that are running all day long. Most likely all were destroyed. There's also a dehumidifier refrigerator and a microwave and TV. Everything that's in the house is most likely destroyed.

Well, we started checking things out and he said well for one thing I can assure you that this computer is fried. I believed him but then after we sort of just started taking a breath we looked around and every single one of the giant commercial freezers had come back on and we're just purring like a kitten.

Keep in mind that this makes absolutely no sense or logic but even if they are still good there is no way computers can live through this.

We systematically started checking every single computer and the one he thought was surely gone was fine. I looked at a little six-outlet bar down there it was plugged into and it had offered protection. I turned it on and every single thing in the office came up and rebooted perfectly.

We checked the Monitor and computer upfront it worked perfectly. There was a router and the dehumidifier was great. The microwave itself in the kitchen was dead.

So, to I my amazement nothing was damaged except one microwave.

I figured it was at least an insurance claim before I realized that nothing was dead. I later found out they have like a $10,000 deductible and it was probably $10,000 worth of damage. I can only imagine they would have been looking at me for replacing things or something. It had created a pretty bad stress level for me.

We waited and waited and all of the freezers stayed frozen and everything worked great. I looked on Craigslist and found them a replacement microwave and brought it by and that was the extent of my penance.

I have not been able to figure out why it went the way it went and every logical bone in my body knows that everything should have been destroyed. I don't know why nothing was destroyed I guess I am considering it an actual electrician miracle.

I might investigate a little bit to see if there's any way that this could have happened beyond miracle but I certainly don't know why it went so well.

Just as a side note our cat had decided that he didn't want to leave yet.

I had finished up with the miracle and we're waiting to see to make sure that nothing bad was going to happen. We were going to leave the next day since I found a microwave the night before and dropped it off.

Our silly cat must have sensed something or have seen us putting things away and getting ready to leave. He decided he would go find someplace to disappear and not be found. We had a reservation at Hillsborough State Park that day and would have loved to get there before dark. We looked around for the cat couldn't find him. We looked everywhere and he just was not to be found. We walked all over the neighborhood saying meow. It was getting on towards about five or six at night and it gets dark at 5 and now it's too late to get there without getting there in the dark. He showed up about 6 at night like what's up.

Our cat's name is Bert and I just said Bert you suck so bad.

The next morning, he ate his food and we wouldn't let him go out at all. We kept him locked inside the RV and of course, he was very angry about that but we left after breakfast.