A storm pulled the line off the house. Why is the power still off?

The storm is over, the houses on either side have their lights back, and a ComEd truck has already been and gone. Yours is still dark, and the wire that used to run from the pole to the roof is hanging lower than it should, or not running to the house at all.

Why is the power still off after ComEd has been out to the house?

ComEd’s crew deals with ComEd’s line. When a limb or a load of ice pulls on that line hard enough to bend the mast on the roof, tear the weatherhead or pull the meter socket off the siding, the damage is on the house’s side, and nobody puts power back through a mast hanging off the fascia. ComEd handles the drop from the pole. The mast and the meter socket wait for an emergency electrician in Lockport.

If the line is on the ground, keep everyone well clear of it and report it to ComEd as a downed wire.

Which Lockport houses have a mast a storm can pull down?

Any house fed overhead, meaning a wire runs from a pole to a pipe on the roof or the wall. In Lockport that is mostly Fairmont, the downtown bluff, and the 1960s and 70s ranch and split-level blocks toward Crest Hill. Most of the 159th Street subdivisions were fed underground when they went in, so there is no drop for a storm to pull.

The older houses in Fairmont and on the bluff have had their service changed more than once, and the mast usually shows it. A service entrance redone by whoever changed it last can carry several owners’ worth of fittings and straps up that pipe, and the oldest of them is usually where it gives.

The ranches are a different shape of risk. Many have the mast coming up through a low, shallow roof, and that short length of pipe carries the whole weight of the drop. A heavy limb across the line, or a January coating of ice, pulls on it from the far end. The pipe bends at the roof, the roof flashing tears with it, and sometimes the meter socket on the wall below gets dragged down an inch or two.

To know which kind of house you have, stand in the yard and look for a wire running from a pole to your roof or your wall. If there is one, this article is about your house. If the meter sits on the wall with nothing overhead, the line comes in underground, and a storm outage there has a different cause.

What can you see from the yard, and what should nobody touch?

Most storm damage to a service shows from the ground, and the driveway is as close as anyone should get until an electrician is there. Look up at the roofline where the wire lands, then down the wall to the meter. These are the signs:

• The mast leaning, bent at the roofline, or pulled away from the fascia or the roof.
• The drop sagging onto the roof, the gutters or a deck railing.
• The meter socket pulled away from the siding, or hanging at an angle.
• The weatherhead, the cap at the top of the pipe, torn open or missing.
• Scorch marks around the meter, or a hum or a crackle coming from it.

No ladder, and no touching the mast, the meter, the socket or the wire, even if the house seems dead.

What does the electrician repair, and is it the time to go to 200 amps?

The repair is the outside of the service: a new mast or a straightened one properly strapped, a new weatherhead, a meter socket set back on the wall, and the service-entrance wires that run through them. That is a like-for-like repair. It puts the house back the way it was, at the same amperage, and the panel inside is left alone.

The other choice is to make it a service upgrade while the outside is already apart. The case worth asking about is a 100-amp ranch still on its original mast. Most of what a storm tore up is what a move to 200 amps would replace anyway, and it may make sense to replace it once, sized for what the house will run next, instead of twice.

It is a bigger job, with the panel inside changing too and the house off longer. Nobody has to decide it in the dark. The electrician can make the house safe on the night and quote the repair and the upgrade side by side once there is daylight to look at the panel.

How do the permit and the ComEd reconnect line up after a storm?

Work at the meter is permitted work in Lockport, and a storm does not change that. The electrician pulls the permit with the City Building Department, does the repair, and lines up the City inspection with ComEd’s reconnect, the same coordination a planned service upgrade gets.

Lockport’s permit rules for electrical work cover the permit and the inspection in full. After a storm the difference is on ComEd’s side. When a storm takes down lines across a lot of houses, ComEd’s crews have a long list, and the reconnect waits its turn on it. An electrician who has done this before knows to have the repair finished and the paperwork moving so the house is ready when ComEd gets to it.

What is priced on the night, and what is quoted after?

The night visit has two jobs: make the house safe and find out exactly what broke. At night or on a weekend that is an after-hours call, a trip charge of $199 to $299 plus an hourly premium. What an after-hours call costs sets it beside the daytime numbers.

The mast, weatherhead and socket repair is priced as a job, after the look. How far the mast bent, whether the socket can go back on the same spot of siding, whether the roof flashing came up with the pipe and whether the service-entrance wires are reusable all move it, and none of that is known until someone is standing under the roof with a light. The quote comes in writing.