Removing electric lines

Saturday I was ready to remove the old shingles from the tool shed in preparation to re-shingle the roof.  The weather forecast calls for rain Saturday night / Sunday morning. Guess I'll wait another day.

After prepping the tool shed roof short of removing its shingles, what to do that will take only one day?   I looked up and saw the answer.  Earlier I had removed the old overhead electric wires going to the barn, and the willow tree fall took out part of the lines that ran to the garage, but I had the lines going to the tool shed and the well as well as the lines from the garage still connected to the house.

The complicated part was removing the lines from the house.  Beyond the fact I had to be careful around the live wire coming in from the power pole, one of the wires went into the house.  How far into the house was the question.

In the photo below I circled in red where the line went into the house after coming out of the breaker box.  (The line was cut by the electrician after he connected the breaker to the wire in the conduit.)

I checked the house's attic, and while I found a wire coming through the attic wall, the location didn't match this wire.  And the wire I found in the attic didn't exit the attic.

Hmmm....    I then had to pry the siding loose as I couldn't take it off due to the pipe coming out of the meter.  A nail under the siding held the wire on the top.  I was able pull and pound the wire loose with some effort.  I imagine another fastener was near where the wire had entered the siding.

With the wire loose I was able to verify the wire wasn't split inside the siding and that another wire somehow could be feeding electricity to this wire.  Then I worked - carefully! - at removing the wires from the house.

I still have power so I must have done something right.

Of course, I didn't get everything done.  The only thing left to do is to remove the three wires from the pole near the well.  The rest of the wires have been rolled up and tossed on the pile of copper wire for recycling.  The aluminum cable used to support the wires from the house to the garage has also been rolled up and saved.


Below are the three wires that ran from the house to the well.  Starting from my shoe to almost the right side of the photo are bare wires.  Tree branches had rubbed off the cloth-like insulation over the years.  Yikes!

It's nice to look up and see sky without wires.

-