We'll Keep the Lights On

As long as the rain stays away, the concrete for the garage should be poured the end of this week.  So we need to finish preparing the site for this. The storm shelter has been moved, the drive and turn around has been cut into the back hill, the retaining wall should be finished by Wednesday. All that was left was to turn off the power to the house, take the outside power connection make it super water proof and get it buried underground. Why it was done the way it was done who knows, but it worked just fine.

So we go to the breaker box located on the electric meter post. We flip the breaker marked "House" to the off position. Bill tests it at the breaker and there is no power. Now to spend 30-45 minutes and get one more thing off the check list. He goes into the not as of yet built house to start splicing wire and just before he touches the 200 amp electric wire it hits him. He is still seeing this:

All the lights are still on in the building. Now the power is off at the box, the breaker tested no power, so how are the lights still on? So glad he was doing this on a gloomy day and the lights were on or this would no longer be a post about another quirk I could easily be posting his obituary. 

Bill looked at the circuit breaker and scratched his head, I looked at the circuit breaker and scratched my head. Finally figured out the the breaker wasn't connected to anything. It and it's wires were just there. It appeared to us that they had wired the house directly into the meter, and that we can't touch. 

So we called Hamilton Electric and they came out on their way home in the dark and looked it over with the aid of the pick up's headlights. They scratched their heads and agreed with us that the house was hardwired to the meter. Legal and safe just unusual and it means you can't turn off the power. OG&E has been called to come unlock the meter so we can get the electric lines taken care of.