More times than not, it is the basics. I am as guilty as anyone, when giving advice, I ASSume things like grounding and bonding, power supply connections and firmware updates have already been checked BEFORE one comes to the site to ask questions.
With all systems, it is always a good practice to give ground and power supply connections a good and thorough check.
Several years ago, after several ESI dealers as well as an ESI engineer, from ESI had worked several unfruitful hours on a very badly mis-behaving ESI Comm Server 600, our company was called. We were the last and if we could not identify and fix the problem, the company was going with a new system from Nortel.
When taking on a new customer, I always do a thorough check of the grounds, bonds and power supply connections. The power was being supplied to the ESI via several multi-plug strips. My first suggestions was to eliminate all the power strips and install a dedicated duplex receptacle for the system. Second, I checked the grounds and bonds. The cable sheath from Verizon was bonded to the nice, fat green wire going to the ground on the ESI cabinet. I checked the gauge and it was a #8 wire. I deemed that to be sufficient. I would rather have had it be a #6, but the copper water pipe that the wire was supposed to be connected was within 10 feet of the system on the other side of the wall.
All LOOKED good, however, when I did a megger test on the ground, it had an infinite open. What??? Since all the cables and this ground wire had been tie-wrapped to several pipes with, at least, 1,000 tie wraps, I knew it was going to be a real nightmare. I think I filled a trash can with all the cut ties. The ground wire went through the wall and continued across the ceiling to the water pipe. After cutting the tie wraps, the ground wire was loose. I tugged on it and nearly fell off the ladder. The ground wire was cut in the wall!
I could have spliced the wire, but I replaced it with a #2 bare copper wire and actually did a water meter shunt to the incoming copper water pipe.
That was 5 years ago. The system has been completely tame and not one single problem reported in 5 years. Other than Windstream problems because in that 5 year span, the client switch to Windstream from Verizon over my vociferous objections, and has enjoyed a cheaper rate and suffered expensive outage due to their incompetence.
So, if anyone has learned anything, ALWAYS check the obvious.
Rcaman
