Am I crazy? Electrical & Zoning Issue - Chicago

[Scott312]

Hi All,

New to the forums here and created an account because we had an issue on New Years morning that has been driving me nuts.  

Preface:  We rent unit 3 in a 4 floor building in Chicago.  Floor 1 is supposed to be commercial "retail space" but it appears to be converted internally into residential and people are living in that unit.  Floors 2, 3, and 4 are all residential condos and occupied.

So, at around 3am on New Years morning our power goes out.  We still have a few people over and we noticed that all of our neighbors still have power and the common areas in our building are still getting electricity (lights were on in the stairwells).

We call Comed and they show that power is connected to their meter and that there are no issues on their end.  We call our property management company and tell them ComEd says everything is good on their end and that they think the outage is caused by an internal issues inside our building.  They send over an electrician who puts a voltmeter to our main incoming feed to our circuit breaker and says there is no power coming in and that I need to call ComEd.  I call ComEd and tell them the story and they say there is nothing we can do.  Frustrated with the situation, I text message my neighbors in units 2 and 4 and ask them if they have any ideas why our unit is the only unit without power for the last 8 hours.  They mention that the power might come through Unit 1 and that something might need to be reset down there.   So, I walk downstairs and outside my building and knock on unit 1's door.  The person in the unit is less than helpful and says there are a bunch of breaker boxes in her unit but shes not touching any of them and I cannot come inside to look.

I get back on the text message with the neighbors and explain the situation.  So about an hour later the owner from Unit 2 gets involved and gets access to unit 1 and flips a breaker and all my power goes back on.

Am I crazy to think that something is wrong here!?  Why does the power to my units breaker box get wired to another unit within my building? We were without power for nearly 12 hours and spent hours of time dealing with Comed, an Electrician, and a nasty neighbor. On top of all of this, what is to prevent that tenant in unit 1 from stealing electricity form us or simply turning of my power at their own discretion (unlikely, but still).  This has got to be a building code violation!
 

Thoughts and opinions are appreciated.

[Marc]

Power should be routed from a service entrance in a common area to all units.

Perhaps some renovations got done that put a breaker, that controls your power, in another person's unit.

Absolutely get them to fix it.  You've been badly inconvenienced. Don't want that to happen again.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Marc

[mtwitty]

Sounds like the unit 1 may have originally been a common area mechanical room, and was later converted to be used as a residence. Tell the property manager you will be getting the local building official involved. That may expedite a correction.

[Jim Baird]

Our local utility won't allow a unit to be fed via another one.

[Mike Lamb]

I thought there was a code reference that occupants should have access to their main electric disconnects if there is not 24 hr. management?  I can't locate that.