I got my electrician over to the house today. What an eye opening experience.

He opened the 200 amp service panel on the telephone pole and I saw that a 10 gauge line wire was electrical taped to the 4 gauge black line wire coming in from the transformer. Wow!! Then the 10 gauge white load wire was screwed into the bus bar. No ground wire from the copper rod driven into the dirt. What a cluster. So, now I have a properly secured 200 amp service into my indoor circuit breaker box.

I took the remote control for my mini split and hit the "on" button and set it to 62* on the cool setting. A few seconds later and my head unit was blowing cold air.

Thanks to everybody who chimed in on how I could solve my problem. Pretty simple when one understands basic electricity theory.

Mucho appreciando.