T-1 Hope all stays well. If not OSHA is gonna have a heyday
Where I work it is still allowed to put polymer L.A.'s on by hand no matter the voltage which is obviously stupid. They say that they don't explode so it's ok, which you all know is wrong. I always used a tap tester even though our rules say you don't have to. Porcelain we use tap testers as a rule, just polymer by hand.
On two occasions I had two polymer L.A.'s explode violently while picking up load to a fault that had nothing to do with said L.A.'s. Both were similar.. Had a squirrel on top of a can blow a 10k and also blew the 65k on the lateral. Closed the 10k dead, then closed the 65k and bam, huge explosion. Patrolled again and had a polymer LA on fire to a primary riser that was in between the transformer fuse and lateral fuse. Cleared it and refused. It was still on fire on the ground when I went back to clean it up.
Another time we put a phase back on the main line and when I closed the load break, a transformer LA blew the transformer LA and fuse, and blew a lateral fuse that was no where near the phase down. Also exploded violently.
Our company's whole reason for doing it by hand was that they don't explode like that. I explained it to safety and they said it was an anomaly... yeah OK thanks for nothing.
I work for one of these companies that just stacks rules on top of rules, but the rules that are somewhat technical are lacking because all the rules are made by people that know nothing. It's too bad because there are a lot of guys that are doing the work that do depend on someone telling them what's right and wrong.
You're making a direct phase to ground connection.. why would you do it by hand even if someone told you it's safe.
T-1 Hope all stays well. If not OSHA is gonna have a heyday