Squirrels,

Viewed: 6477

Posted by: yankee
[email protected]
3346930120
Date: Mar 10 2012 7:23 AM

Recently a squirrel, chewed off the neutral wire coming to my house sending 240 volts through my entire house. This burned up anything with a circuit board and all florescent lights costing me thousands of dollars. A new refrig, computers, lights, alarm clocks, microwave and the list goes on. This happened on Alabama Power,s end of the wire and you would think they would be responsible but they refuse to accept any responsibility at all. Go to my insurance company, the power company said squirrel"s caused it,being a rodent the insurance won"t cover any of it.So we contacted the Public Service Comm. They called Alabama Power and were told it wasn"t their fault so in other words if Alabama Power"s line breaks you are screwed. Has anyone else with the new smart meters seen their power costs go up, mine did about 30%. Chech out all the negative publicity about smart meters and you would not allow them on your house.

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I feel your pain. My house is made of cypress. Squirrels love to chew on my home. At first, I thought it was birds, but one day a few years back I saw a squirrel, spread eagle, chewing a corner. I bought a .17 caliber rifle from Wally-Mart, I've shot well over 600-700 since then. While I've thinned them out around my home, they keep coming. They keep coming, I keep shooting. It's rare now to see a chew mark on my home. Squirrels are nothing more than "tree rats".
We wnt to J&L Electric and purchased a whole house surge protector, electric, cable and phone, it wont happen again. This episoge burned the cable wire back to the pole.
Is the squirrel ok?Thanks,Ralph Edwards
I have my wire buried but that was ten years ago when my house was built. It cost $450.00 for Ala Pow to bury the wires to my meter back then. No telling what it cost now.
The short easy answer...........underground utilities........make them bury it.
rebelsqual, they chew the connector off, its aluminum and they like it I guess, it was clearly chewed off, one thing I don"t understand is why if it is my line why they rush out and fix it for nothing, Alabama Power is not in the habit of doing anything for nothing
I have a friend that has a shed behind her house and the electricity for that shed is transferred directly from the utility pole. She was having problems and called her utility company. They came out and found that the wire coming from the utility pole had been chewed almost completely into two pieces. There was one strand left holding the wire together. She was advised to shoot every dad gum squirrel she saw.Maybe we need squirrel or rodent insurance on our houses now.
The power company's responsibility ends at the customers transformer. Secondary wire off of the transformer is the customer's responsibility. This is regardless of who you have power through.
those are some thick wires coming into a house meter,are you sure thats what it was a squirrel? I went and looked at mine,they were thick.