Posted 3 years ago
AnythingOb…
(1778 items)
Ever gaze at your electric meter $pinning it$elf into $ummer $illine$$ with all the a/c running and etc., and wonder what's actually *in* that gray metal box on the wall behind it?? Well, HERE'S YOUR CHANCE TO FIND OUT ?!! ;-) ;-) :-) :-) :-)
Curb rescued recently, this one came off another house in my neighborhood (with a couple more rusty gray boxes) so could quite possibly date to the early 1950's when my subdivision was built. Doesn't really matter much, what's inside whatever replaced it now would be nearly the same, only differing in the particular shape, size, and configuration of the current (whoops, I mean "modern"...sorry for bad pun) equivalent parts.
The electric meter itself 'plugs onto' the prong things in the top half of the box, which then gets the steel lid with the big round hole closed over it to hold it in place. HEAVY-DUTY wiring directly from the pole on the street (or again, its equivalent) connects into the topmost terminal lugs, then continues from the lower ones (also in HEAVY-DUTY form) onto whatever box or group of other boxes that contain the actual circuit breakers (or fuses, if they're really old) that in turn branch off somehow to *every single* assorted electrical thing that's otherwise in your house. The lower cover is installed last, then sealed with a little wire gizmo in its latch preventing its reopening. This specific model of box very well might have been available with a large 'master breaker' disconnect in its bottom half, I don't know for sure but this one *didn't* have that. :-)
DISCLAIMER that I hope shouldn't need to be said, but HEY -- people are people and sometimes they ain't as bright as they could be ifn's they grab onto this kinda stuff whether intentionally or not, at least for a brief moment that lingers with the smell of freshly cooked meat...? <eeek> By my use of the term "HEAVY-DUTY" here, it should be considered EXACTLY THE SAME as if anybody climbed up a utility pole and grabbed onto all the cables *up there* -- we all know what happens when tree branches or squirrels/etc. accidentally do that every so often, don't we...?? ( 'nuff said, I hope?)
This particular example is by WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORPORATION, their "TYPE STG-5".
I might actually put it to use one of these days (since it is, afterall, a nice clean and complete old example?!) with a surplus electric meter, in order to control some of my other electric lights and toys....??? <lolol>
I did my apprenticeship at a Power Board in the 80s and one of the things apprentices did was change meters. No flash boxes like that these, they were inside the house on the switchboard so quite often you had to do a whole lot of shuffling to make things fit. Some of the meters were really old pre war probably. After we changed them people would complain about high power bills. The new meters were tested and calibrated prior to being put in our van so they were accurate. Problem was the old meters had worn the bearings on the dial and were running slow!! :)
Yeah. They just swapped mine recently to a new unit with rf I think it is? So they don't have to leave the truck to read neters anymore.