Crazy or Funny stories of neighbors stealing power?

[URDesignerCub]

Anyone have any hilarious stories?

I seem to recall reading about a guy that setup an inductive coil in the hay-loft in his barn that was close to the transmission line and fed his barn with it.

[Hebrew]

A guy here got disconnected from the mains but still had the neutral.Guy goes about six spans down,hooks a nail with some wire tied to it over the phase,pulls it tight and ties the wire off at the butt of the pole.He then runs about 200 yards of the wire through the bushes,back to his house,into the main breaker and lights back on!Creative,isn't he?

[Trouble1]

Had one where the guy owned two properties. One on one side of the street and the other on the opposite side. He ran an extension cord from one house over the primary and down to his other house. Luckily for him it was spacer cable. I let him know how stupid I thought he was and that's all that came of it. He wasn't really stealing I guess, but I'm sure if I actually went to his meter that it would have been upside down or something.

One of the other guys told me a story of a guy who was cut off and used the cable wire to connect to the secondaries. He used the middle pin as the hot and the jacket as the neutral. The trouble man got called out for a low wire and decided to just cut the cable wire from the ground without looking up because he thought it was just a random low cable wire that we get tons of calls on. I guess he was pretty surprised when his side cutters exploded.

[Old Line Dog]

My last job was a Troubleman, for an Orlando utility.

Had a.."Cutoff". Dman, I hated those....

Drove up...MEAN Pit bull chained to a tree...with about 5 ft. of chain...no water in his bowl.

Siht like that just breaks my heart. Pulled out my ladder...climbed up on the roof, and cut and rolled back the service.. It was actually a "Cut Off at Pole", but with the dog...no way I could get to the pole.
My Truck Driver, reported the dog, and the circumstance.. to the ASPCA.

Next day...got the same "cut off" Again. WTF!!!

The guy had climbed up on the roof, and reconnected his service with DUCT TAPE!!

When we rolled up...he was sittin on the front steps.

"I know why your here man...but, they Took my Dog."
Bout broke my heart....He loved that dog so much...but treated that dog so bad.

And I still had to cut his power off...again...

I still think about that experience some times. And It's never a good feeling. I'm such a Dog Lover... and...Well...never mind....

[Pootnaigle]

Umm when we dunnem like that we had customers use jumper cables n hook em back up at the house end

[bluestreak]

Had one of the old timers who had been a lineman in the 40s and 50s then a groundman. Crew was working in front of his house, lineman on the pole noticed down ground on pole "covered #4 cpr"was on the live leg not the neutral little investigating by the crew found that was the feed to this guys garage "he picked up the grd/neutral from his house wiring. Foreman on the truck "remember them" made things right installed grd rod base of pole connected to neutral then went back to the shop and told this guy to rewire his garage. That was that didn't go to the office just handled it, not like todays supervisors that can't wait to get somebody fired to show the troops who's the boss

[bren guzzi]

The irish gypsies have perfected the art of wiring thier caravans to street light cables... It's so obvious when ya drive past at night.. The street lights not working and all the caravans lit up.. And not a generator in sight...

[BigClive]

Anyone have any hilarious stories?

I seem to recall reading about a guy that setup an inductive coil in the hay-loft in his barn that was close to the transmission line and fed his barn with it.

Sadly that's just a myth. If you could get that much power just from capacitive coupling or inductance from a transmission line then the losses would make that form of power transfer impractical. The infamous "lighting a fluorescent tube" demonstration involves millionths of an amp of current flow with the voltage gradient across the tube ionising the gas inside.

[Hebrew]

Check this one out....guy loosens the split bolt on the phase,and by-passes the meter.It was done very neat but the colour of the wire was a dead give-away.