Good day everyone! My name is Adree, working as a safety compliance auditor at ECC for around 5 years now. I mainly work in the businesses nearby ECC corporations' main HQ.

As a safety compliance auditor and officer, I always encounter unsafe environments and have to regularly provide insight and give light to the issues a building could have and often times, the most affected areas with the least safety precautions in the electrical work is in the rural areas.

Often times, when I look around, I always think how did any electrician think this was a good idea??? and it's not a surprise that folks are not willing to pay up for fixing up their work to compliance; thats why I offer my work for free.

But, today, in this article, I'll tell everyone here what I believe is one of the most insane stories I have heard about electrical safety compliance - and how I audited all the failures in one house on sitting on a farm, around ~2 years ago. One of Cu's friend, Queenie had asked me to check their property out, and I was, at the minimum, shocked, no, literally electrocuted, shocked, by what the property was like.

Let's look at each scenario - beginning with the first one:

Problem: Weather-exposed wiring on outdoor poultry coop power feeds.

Honestly I don't know if it's laziness or something else to why people leave stuff like this alone, so I had to patch it up. Insulation cracking from UV/rain exposure leading to short circuits and shock hazards.

So the immediate corrective action I applied is to shut off the power at the main breaker and encase all outdoor poultry coop wires inside weather proof, impact resistant PVC conduit.

While going to the workshop of the owner to get some tools, I found something... scary. The next one is:

Problem: Overloaded power strip in a farm equipment workshop.

Now tons of people do this daily - I see it everywhere. People stack and octopus chain extension cords because its not long enough and chaining is very reasonable. But connecting EVERYTHING? in your workshop to ONE CORD? especially FARM EQUIPMENT. That's not acceptable. Because overheating conductors causing insulation melting and potential fire ignition, resulting in a fire.

So the immediate corrective action is to shut off the power, unplug the heavy tools from the power strip, and move them to dedicated wall outlets that can handle the electrical load. I hope they don't do this again, real fire hazard this time.

Alright. I moved outside the workshop. I see outlets everywhere, and they're not outdoor rated -_-

Problem: Standard wall receptacle used near agricultural water irrigation pump.

The real threat here isn't the fact it's the outdoors, it's the fact that it's near the a water irrigation pump. Water splashing causing ground faults, severe electrocution, or short circuiting. This is really where I got shocked - I tried turning off the pump, but the pump's metal enclosure immediately shocked me with 480V. Ouch.

All I really had to do there was to replace the standard outlet with the weather-resistant GFCI receptacle, and enclose it in a heavy-duty lockable “in-use” weatherproof cover. Now if you do get shocked, the GFCI will trip and save you.

One really nice thing I liked was near the greenhouse, was a set of Solar Panels. But...

Problem: Ungrounded metallic mounting framework of off-grid rooftop solar PV array.

A problem my older clients faced were lightning strikes or inverter fault currents energizing solar panel frames resulting in them... breaking! Which is quite expensive. Grounding also helps keep GFCI breakers effective as they rely on that principle. Without grounding, much of safety patches I applied would have been useless.

So I just had to shut-off the DC disconnect switch, mechanically bond all aluminum solar panel frames together using bare copper wire, and route that wire directly to a dedicated 8-foot grounding rod. Done! Now the solar panels can work safely.

FOne of my favorite issues in this property was the main breaker because...

Problem: Corroded main circuit breaker panel in a high-humidity utility storage shed.

The obvious problem: Breaker failure to trip during overload events, increasing electrical fire risk. Not just that - corrosion can slowly start fires within the wiring itself due to high resistance, and that's even more dangerous - fire in the wiring can burn other wires, making a chain reaction all throughout the property.

Finally, I simply shut-off the main utility disconnect feed, remove corroded panel board, and install a new circuit breaker panel inside a NEMA 4x weather-proof, corrosion resistant enclosure. Now that's expensive. That wasn't free. It was also honestly a ticking time bomb anyway - that new circuit breaker's weather-proofing will eventually break due to opening/closing and other factors and it will get rusted. Better put it in a basement or something.