Landed Home Tripped in Storm: Isolator Terminal Screw Loose

A trip during heavy weather on equipment serviced a short while beforehand, with no history of tripping at all. The weather has been rough before without incident. Nothing else on the property was affected.

Two dates matter here and only one is obvious. The storm is when it appeared; the service is when the conditions for it were created. Rough weather before the visit passed without incident, which rules out the weather as a sufficient cause on its own. What changed in between is what was opened, and an enclosure opened and closed with one fastener short lets water in the moment there is enough of it.

An enclosure keeps weather out by being closed properly, and a fastener left short still holds the panel in place. Nothing looks wrong and nothing is loose to the eye. In dry conditions the gap does nothing at all. Under driven rain water enters, finds a path across something live, and the protection responds exactly as designed to a situation the visit had created days earlier.

The panel is refitted and every fastener taken up properly, and anything already wet is dried before it has time to corrode. What generalises here is the question, not the fix. When a weather-triggered fault appears on equipment that has just been worked on, ask what was opened rather than what has broken. The weather is only the trigger; the visit is the cause.