RV panel. The wiring I found in here scares me. Apparently the fuse was for appearances only as there's nothing actually wired to it. I will probably end up completely re-wiring this panel.
Here's the RV Panel and the 1st hole I dug to see which way the wires go.
And here's the wires I found leaving the RV Pedestal. The thick one in the middle is the electric - 3 4ga wires in a shared plenum. The other two are phone and cable.
Overall view of the pedestal and the wires leaving it. Oh yeah...in several holes I discovered that whoever did the original work used trash to fill in some of the holes. I've found lots of bags and newspapers and broken glass bits.
The 2nd hole I dug. This was at the back corner of the house. At first I thought I found the 3 in on 1 plenum....if I had dug a tiny bit more I would have realized I actually had the 3 lines off the meter and could have saved myself a lot of digging.
Better view of the 2nd hole.
Overall view of the 2nd hole.
The main house panel. The backyard circuit runs off the 2 50 amp breakers which are off.
3rd hole. The wires that leave the panel go into the attic and over to the other side of the house where at some point they are joined to a set of 2ga neutral and 1/0ga hot lines that feed our private 2nd meter that only meters usage in the backyard.
I found a number of interesting things in this hole. Including the end of what I believe is the "mystery Romex" that goes out to the back fence. Now that I know where it ends I'll have to look into wiring it up so I can have a fence on the back gate.
Lots of trash in this hole. And lots of loops of extra wire that were just burried to hide them. No wonder he told us "I don't remember where I ran it to" when we asked him where the mystery romex went.
This is the sub-panel under the outside kitchen which feeds the entire backyard. It feeds everything in the kitchen, our shed, my office, and is run in parallel with the RV pedestal.
Tried to get a shot of it from the other side...but couldn't see what I was doing and the camera chose to focus on a drain vent instead. Oh well.
Bigger view of the fault. I dug the trench that's vertical in the photo first to try and find the wires...then started following them in hopes of locating where they connect to the wire that feeds the RV pedestal and the kitchen sub-panel.
The meltdown. I lucked out on picking JUST the right place to dig to find this. I looked at the yard and what I knew and tried to figure out where the branch for the kitchen sub-panel probably was. Then dug there. By chance I didn't find the branch...but I did find the fault! A few inches to either side and I would have missed it!
Closer view of the damage. The 1/0ga hot wire is burned through as is the 2ga neutral. The damage did not look very fresh. What surprises me is that one circuit which was wired off the other hot leg was still working (when I tested it with some Christmas lights.) I'm guessing the ground must have been conducting at that point.
