It happened to me...my rental was turned into a grow house
A property of mine in the California Central Valley went vacant at the end of November. For the past 4 years, I had a family renting the SFH. I performed annual inspections, serviced the the HVAC filter and smoke alarms, ect, so I was able to see the inside of the property every year and it always looked very well maintained. Fast forward to this November: I get a text from an international number. The person claims to be my tenant and says that he was deported, and that his friend has been living at the porperty for the past 8 months. He also claims the house is empty and that I can have access. I'm immediately suspicious, so I make a trip out to the property and find all the locks changed and the blinds closed. Just to be safe, I post a 24 Hour Notice to Enter and come back the next day. I arrive at the property, drill the locks out, and gain access. Everything is absolutely filthy (no surprise there). The carpet is trashed, the 2 bathrooms probably need to be gutted and remodeled, missing doors, broken windows, and the power is off (meter has been removed).
This is where it gets interesting. I start talking to the neighbors, and they say that the police and a news van were at the house about a month ago, and that some people got arrested. At this point, I do a quick google search on my phone and that's when I saw pictures of the house and of the marijuana grow operation that was taking place. The news story mentioned that the operation was discovered because the tenants were stealing power, so I instantly knew there were going to be some serious electrical issues. I pulled the electrical panel apart and luckily, it was in good condition and completely untouched. However, when i went in the garage, I found a section of drywall had been cut out underneath the electrical panel. I removed it and found where the tenant had illegally tapped into the utility power. Basically, they cut the feeder conduit before the meter, carefully strip away some of the insulation on the wires and then use some type of alligator clip or splice device to hook up the equipment used for growing (lights, fans, ect). Ugh...
After talking with the utility company and some contractor friends, it appears that restoring power is going to be a drawn out, complicated process. I wanted to post some pictures and document this process in case someone else runs into this issue. The first step requires all of the damage to the electrical system to be fixed, and a permit/inspection from the city so that they can issue a meter release to the electric company. I'm working with an electrician in the area to get the ball rolling on that.
Any advice from people who have dealt with something like this is always welcome.