How many houses to a transformer?

**duke** · December 1st, 2008, 12:11 AM

I've noticed kind of an anomaly in one of the neighborhoods that I regularly get tickets in.

Rather than having between 2-4 houses served by a single electrical transformer, this neighborhood seems to have between 8 and 10! The first few times I located it, I would do the address I was called for, plus one on either side. Usually this is a fairly safe method---and yes, I know that more houses can be served, and I always check any houses that I think might be served by a transformer. But 10 houses? Yeah, I'd love to blow an afternoon doing that.

I've also noticed that the secondaries to the houses are not joint buried with the primary electrical loop. Each one was trenched individually! Thus, it's possible that the yard that actually has the transformer in it has up to 10 secondaries running all over the front yard!

I've seen plenty of strange utility routing methods in unzoned/rural areas, but this neighborhood is well within city limits of a medium-sized town. How did the engineers let this happen? These are medium-sized homes (2-4 bedrooms, 2 car garages, built in the 70s-80s).

Anyone else have tales like this? Any tips or timesavers?

**yahoo** · December 1st, 2008, 07:56 PM

wish i could tell you an easy way and if there was one i think i would have figured it out by now.....hahaha......one way to do it correctly..call the power client and have them send a technician to unbond each individual svc and locate them one at a time on direct connect....or i have heard that you can ring clamp each ind. svc. from the house and trace back but i don't recommmend that method....

**yahoo** · December 1st, 2008, 07:58 PM

i'm having problems like this in my area where power street lights are being added to the streets long after the main power contractor has done come and gone and no matter how you hook up to the street light it will not locate good enough for me to leave and know my job is done perfect......

**beyond help** · December 1st, 2008, 10:17 PM

I have a sub where they did this, but the phone and electric actually is all on one side of the road. Each ped/transformer feeds 5 houses on each side of the road. A house with the ped/transformer takes at least 90 minutes.

**yahoo** · December 2nd, 2008, 07:28 PM

yikes!!!!!!!!!! BH.....move to a rural area....!!!!!!!!! hahhahahha

**beyond help** · December 2nd, 2008, 07:40 PM

Hell no. I love my multiple duct runs, street lights(that don't tone), and untoneable gas. Rural areas, hell no! Give me that concrete jungle.

**RedToes** · December 2nd, 2008, 08:03 PM

Are those transformers three phase? (Kidding)

**UtahLocator** · December 3rd, 2008, 11:53 AM

When I was working up in Portland it seems like all the power was ran that way. Only the brand new subdivisions were ran the logical way. Without having a tech come out, the best way to get them accurately is just to locate from every house back to the source. It's a bunch of crap.

**wet_boots101** · December 5th, 2008, 07:48 AM

Duke - I work for the electric company now here in IL and tell ya what - there is no real logic to how many customers / transformer, to be honest! But they ARE rated to supply a specific amount of juice and not much more... Depending on the rating of the transformer there could be a lot more than 8-10 residential services on it!

But even if the print shows the rating there's no guarantee you would definitively have a set count in your head how many you should be looking for. I'm still learning this stuff myself, I could tell you more when that information passes my way.

From experience as well, there are some services that go directly to the transformers and some that are fed off of LSMs (line secondary mains) - basically a secondary ped which branches off from a transformer. Be careful when you do your locate is all I can advise. Also, you get to know an area more over time so you'll figure it out someday if not now!