Here is an interesting video about a New York homeowner loosing one leg of his electrical service due to a corroded buried aluminum wire that wasn't in conduit. When they replaced the entire service cable from the pole to the house, they made sure that the wire was buried in conduit to ensure the wire would be better protected from the outdoor elements and to more easily replace the wire if it ever failed again in the future.

 

It looked like that after a repair 10 year repair about 3 months ago when I was getting surges into the trailer. It has been nothing but a light rain all day ( no stopping) here. I may just have to invest into some type of cover / tent type since this rain is going to be like this all weekend. I figure if everything goes ok. I should have the wires open and checked to see if maybe something came loose or it's been corroding up again? I'm also going to measure and look into the cost of the wires themselves to all 3 being replaced. I found out a guy at works does their electrical work so I am going to have him run me through a quick tutorial on how to check and replace breakers and wires. I pick up things pretty easy when showed so that helps. Sine the power will be off, I will replace the main in the trailer since it's most likely been in there forever. I can keep the old one as a back up as well. I'm pretty sure I'm looking around 20 ft in wiring. Wish me luck.

 

Based on the video provided, if the supply line is aluminum, it would be best to dig up the entire line and install a new line encased in PVC conduit. That should alleviate this issue from ever happening again in the future.

 

Yeah, That what I am looking into doing. I am going to do some measuring this weekend and hopefully the rain will lay off so I can get into there and dig the line up that is still under dirt. I know there is pvc pipe from the box inside to about the edge of the trailer it's self. Why wasn't fully ran to the outside box is pure simple cutting corners. I know hitting the pipe would have prevented me cutting through it in the first place. I will keep you guys updated. Thanks

 

It depends on who does the cable. When we did ours, if WE ran the cable, it had to be in conduit. If the power company ran the cable, it could be direct bury. Of course, direct bury is MUCH more expensive......

 

Interesting. In my area, the power company had to repair my power line after the county workers hit my power line while scraping the drainage ditch in front of our house during their maintenance procedure to keep the ditch clear and flowing. In my view, there should have been no way that the county workers should have been able to hit the power line, since it should have been buried so deep that it should have been on its way to China. Anyway, I requested that the power company re-bury the power line coming to my home since it wasn't in the ground very deep and I didn't want anyone to touch it and be potentially zapped. After chasing the power company a bit for a couple of months, they dispatched their contractor to come out and re-bury my power line. My power line runs down a pole across the street from me and goes under the street and into my yard, then traverses under a concrete driveway, then up to the back of my home. When they installed the new power line deeper in the ground, they installed it in conduit and spliced it onto my existing power line just before it went under the concrete driveway. That new power line was about 5 feet deep in my yard. That process seemed to go well until about 3 - 4 months later. I happened to be taking a long shower in an upstairs bathroom and after coming downstairs, I noticed that water had overflowed in the downstairs bathroom. After thinking about what just happened, I determined that it was likely a sewer backup that was caused by the recent power line repair. Sure enough, the contractor had bored through my 4" cast iron main sewer line and the conduit was sitting right on top of the sewer line once a backhoe was brought in to repair things. The electric company ended up repairing my sewer line, along with all associated expenses.

 

Now that is just plain crazy. lol I'm sure it was my old landlord who did the wiring to the pole. We are talking maybe 4 to 6 feet from the mobile home. This guy will pinch every corner he can. lol. I have replaced a lot of shabby work from him here over the years. It's a old trailer so I replaced all the galvanized to all pvc. Electrical I am limited experience but pretty fast learner. My main thing is safety first so I ask and watch a lot of videos before I even attempt things. I did speak with the guy at my work who does their electrical and he made things pretty clear on how to approach it and what I needed to do when I showed him some pictures of my plans. Between him and you guy's, I have a good idea of what I need to do. Now if the weather will work with me.

We bought the place about 10 years back.

 

Good luck. I'm sure you will get things right once the weather clears up a bit. If you watched the video I provided in the link earlier, that guy in NY also had issues that seemed to be weather related and the backhoe ran into some issues related to the ground being soft from the winter snow.

 

I did get some decent weather to at least find the one leg was starting to corrode. It's looking that I may need around 30ft of new wire to replace the old line. I wont be able to do that til next pay check in about two weeks. I did a temporary fix again but well covered and wrapped the wires really good. They are above ground so water can't sit on them as well I have a tarp over the area to keep water out as much as possible. I ran both my compressor and dryer to make sure the line was good and it passed. Before I couldn't run either one alone. Thanks for all the help and advice guys. It really helped me a lot. I had latex gloves from taking care of the wife and I bought some good leather gloves so when I get the wire, I will be ready to run the new lines.