I need to do an emergency teardown...share your stories with me..

[St. Phatty]

Once I had to break down a 1K set up with about 15 plants.

Put them in bags in the back of my truck, had had the carpets cleaned etc.


Had some visitors, gave them a house tour.


Then set back up.

The plants did not like being bagged. Also it was late spring, too hot to have a 1K indoors.

 

[Ph-patrol]

I noticed that the white neutral was connected to the bite fitting on the back of the plug....I never connect there because of this very problem.I only use the crew connectors on side of plug.Basically the bite fitting in the back of plug loses its bite creating disconnection of current and consequently arcing.

 

[mtbazz]

Fix it yourself

Replace the breaker for that circulate and check all the plugs on that same circuit.
.Unscrew each plug and plate pull out plugs and inspect. This in not hard to do.
There is a culprit and most likely you will find the problem.
If you are inexperienced shut main breaker off when changing out you 15 amp breaker.
take a pic of panel and bring to home store.Bye a pack of plugs too.
If you bring ma electrician in say that he cant go in this area or room and if he bitches say too bad figure it out with out access.Its your house you set the rules.

at this point Im simply not attempting to do anything...First off, Im not one to pretend he has knowledge or a skill set he doesn't have. I've replaced switches and outlets in the past so can do that, but frankly I am just tempted to have the electrician come through and do all that as he may discover some issue that I would not have picked up on.

Second of all, this is an old house (built in 1972) and throughout the years has had electrical work performed by "do it yourselfers" who at best had rudimentary knowledge of wiring ( I look at some of this shit they did and there are things that basically look like they were wired with fucking speaker wire), this includes the wiring of GFCI in the part of the house with issues that was done by a guy who was basically the local drunk who passed made money as a handyman...when he wanted to work that is.
Thirdly...and most importantly I will be apprehensive as hell and will simply not rest unless I get a certified electrician in here to look at this shit...The fact that the neutral wire arced and melted hours after the initial power outage frankly has me wondering what other issues exist I don't know about.


Honestly, I look at do it yourself electricians for the most part as :yanks:

No offense intended by that. If you are confident in your abilities, fine..but I've simply seen and heard of too many home wiring jobs that were questionable.

Bottom line is in my book electricity is just something left to someone with training....

 

[mtbazz]

Once I had to break down a 1K set up with about 15 plants.

Put them in bags in the back of my truck, had had the carpets cleaned etc.


Had some visitors, gave them a house tour.


Then set back up.

The plants did not like being bagged. Also it was late spring, too hot to have a 1K indoors.

i run 1k...but i have central A/C and have ductwork feeding into the tent from a floor vent...

 

[Ph-patrol]

A man must know his limitations.....Moving a whole grow vs changing plugs.
I'm least path of resistant type of guy.
Nailed me on the yank thing.True that

 

[McKush]

Stick to your plan Empty. Every thing youve said so far is spot on and something seems wrong with that circuit. Youve got a real safety issue which must take precedence

 

[packerfan79]

I would just put the plants in a closet. No plugs in closets no reason to get in your closet. I hopefully it's not major issue. I have moved and tore down a 10x 12 room with 50 5-6 ft plants overnight solo. It sucked balls. Plants got thrips in mom's garage. Still turned out to be a bumper crop. In the end the electrician found a lose ground in my bedroom. They never even went in to the garage where my " man cave " was.

 

[St. Phatty]

For people that have to do the
"eliminate every trace of marijuana grow from the premises"
routine ...

it definitely helps to have the right tools.

An air-conditioned van with LED lights and discreet in appearance ...
one tool that comes in handy.


Do-it-yourself carpet cleaning

etc.


It's pretty straightforward, just a boatload of work.


I was wondering about this as a Business.

A very specialized form of house-cleaning, sort of.


How much would you pay someone to do all the work for moving a grow room,

cleaning the place up so it passes whatever kind of inspection,

setting the grow room back up, including ventilation,

plus taking care of the plants while they're in their alt. location,

and making it Clean & Copacetic, so the moving around of plants
is done in a way that's not suspicious.


The one time I had to to do it, I didn't have an audience.


Another time, now that I'm thinking about it, I used a storage space I rented nearby.

That time my neighbors did get to see me walking back and forth with plants covered in boxes.

 

[Stoner4Life]

Stick to your plan Empty. Every thing youve said so far is spot on and something seems wrong with that circuit. Youve got a real safety issue which must take precedence

^QFT^


if you can't locate and remedy what has to be the obvious culprit then hire an electrician, if you have loved ones in the home you cannot risk their lives because it's risky or inconvenient to fix the issue by hiring a pro.

personally, I'd go around the home pulling various outlet and light switch covers, look for the obvious issues as you've already uncovered; if they all seem fine then you've most likely localized the problem to that particular room's wiring or something else on that same room's breaker, or maybe the breaker itself.

If you replace the compromised receptacles, wiring and/or that breaker yourself then you should arrange to get/borrow/rent an electricians voltage tester, tool rental shops come in handy for this purpose and the shop can instruct you on how to use it properly.

If in fact it is the breaker that was bad and not tripping (allowing wiring to heat up) then you might have to replace every single wire connected to that breaker, the most obvious issue to you right now is the arcing/shorting of the ground wire @ the outlet; you cannot see if there was any other damage to wiring behind the walls, imo you shouldn't risk the potential for fire by using what might now be compromised wiring. Also, good wiring that was up to code rarely goes bad on its own, either the breaker or sub par connections by your friendly electrician are the likely culprits.

With a little luck you might be able to use the existing wiring to pull your new wiring from that room to the breaker box, the folks @ Home Depot can be a great asset when it comes to general information like this.

I don't mean to boil your issue down to a single cliche but, safety is no accident.

Best of luck mtbazz.......

 

[Jellyfish]

Funny story. A few months after an emergency teardown, I woke up one morning to a roofing crew tearing off my roof (I was a renter, and my landlord never came around.)

So, long story short, I had the grow room exhausting up through the attic, and oops, it's too late to go up there and move anything. They couldnt have seen it, but I was sure they could SMELL it.

I went outside, said hi to the guys, found the one guy up there that spoke english, and try to feel him out.

He seemed okay/oblivious/unconcerned, so I went back in the house and waited it out. I wasn't freaking out as much as the other time, and nothing ever came of it.

My advice? You can always grow again. There's no genetics, no seeds, no amount of bud that's worth the world of shit of getting busted. Good luck!

 

[rives]

Ph was likely on track as to what your issue might be. Neutral problems can manifest in very unusual ways, and what you think is a dedicated circuit may not be. Any receptacles used should be of the "specification" or "commercial" grade, and only the side screw/plate connections should be used. The wiring should be set up so that the connections are done with a wire nut to connect the wire from the panel, the downstream circuitry, and the pigtail that will then connect to your receptacle. This keeps the rest of the house from having issues if the connections at the receptacle go south.

Good luck.

 

[Slipnot]

Coolest people i ever met were electricians matter of fact when i had them wire up 50,000 watt grow room 2 of them became partners and best friends today . that was over 10 years ago )
Honesty now there is some common knowledge with electricity but for peace of mind sometimes having a licensed electrician come and do the work will save you a headache and keep peace of mind that while your sleeping your house is not going to catch on fire
There is no substitute for safety specially when family / kids are involved

 

[igrowone]

i got the impression there was arcing in an empty outlet, i.e. there was no connected device?
seriously scary, something caused a electrical pathway to appear
water/condensation could do that(maybe)
but with everything else going on, an electrician has gotta be the 1st choice

 

[Jellyfish]

There is no substitute for safety specially when family / kids are involved

Of course, no one on here would EVER grow with children in the house.

 

[McKush]

An errant nail, lots of possible issues. Improper tap, mice.... Thats why its dangerous to take advice over the interwebby where matters of safety are involved.

 

[Shmavis]

specialized like this?

specialized like this?

I was wondering about this as a Business.

A very specialized form of house-cleaning, sort of.

A cleaner of another sort, eh?

 

[Ph-patrol]

 

[blastfrompast]

Check ur breakers...

listen to your pannel box also if that makes sense...hear any arc'ing....almost like the faint sound of bacon frying lol...

Found a gremlin at a buddies house that way that didn't grow.....his breaker would flip every once in a while...he was determined that it was a receptical issue....nope...bad breaker....had a bit of nice burn on it too lol

 

[hvac guy]

The receptacle was wired using the quickwire slot on the back, it`s a very flimsy connection, it would be safer to strip the wire end and wrap around the screw or use a ring or spade terminal and attach to the screw.

 

[Lyfespan]

I've had some weird electrical issues the past week. Lights that are at half power for a couple of minutes, than go to full power, than the past two days lights that are delayed when they are turned on. Instead of coming on instantaneously there was about a half second delay.

Than this morning i had a vacuum plugged into the circuit those lights are on and everything went out that was on that circuit.

Called an electrician but he won't come out till this coming friday.

After all of that I went to plug something in that was in that affected part of the house and noticed arcing from behind the outlet cover. Pulled that off and one of the neutrals was burnt. Insulation was burned clean off. Im not even sure that outlet was part of the overall circuit that lost power, as even after the power went out this particular outlet still had power.

Now I need to do an extensive teardown. over a dozen clones are now at a friends house, the moms are going over there tomorrow.

I have four plants under 12:12 in my tent, three are at two weeks flowering, one is at 30 days. No fucking idea what I'll do with them but given my electrical situation I can't keep them here, so outside they go for now.

FML...growing the best phenos i've ever had access to and this shit occurs.

Make me feel better with your emergency teardown stories.

ok//some photos...first...diagram of the issues, followed by photos of the outlet that was arcing....key thing here to remember that this still had power after power went out elsewhere, and I think (but am not positive) that it's part of the overall circuit that is affected.

i think i can clear up what happened here, op does the hot side of the outlet have the metal jumper cut? the jumper is on the side of the outlet going from lug to lug. we cut these tabs so the switch can control half of the outlet, we also usually install these upside down.

i see 2 neutrals and one hot, this tells me theres something up with this plug location