I'm a believer in safety. Some extremes do tend to drive up the price of every thing.
Some common sense is needed, like using an old style grounded outlet for your cellar freezer, not a GFCI. Same deal with the sump pump.
Seems to me your neutral went bad, and you substituted a ground for the neu tral instead of fixing the neutral, and it worked for a while, but it isn't the right solution. In fact it covered up the fact that your neutral is b roken somewhere. So driving the ground rod delayed fixing the problem.
Yep...dawned on me (finally!! :) ) that was precisely what happened...it just so happened that there was a nick in the ground wire that noticed, too, independently that got me sidetracked over it plus just hadn't thought specifically about the fact that the overhead bare support cable the two feeders are wrapped around also serves as the neutral...
Was windy enough by time got back from town yesterday afternoon didn't get the lift out to get up there and check those connections; looks like that may be today as well so it'll have to wait a day or so. Fortunately, everything that is mandatory is 240V loads...
The neat part is humans don't sense the shocks that livestock do. We have only two hooves.
+1
Mark
Thing is, that in the shower, cows don't wear hooves or boots. Silly! So, cows would get shocked in the shower, also.
Sometimes, all it takes is to go ask someone else. The process of explaining the problem really clears up the old brain cells.
On 11/04/2015 5:55 AM, Dean Hoffman wrote: ...
Can happen (and does, of course) but so far not been an issue here...
A newer, larger operation, particularly dairy is indeed a capital-intensive proposition. We run a stocker/feeder operation with a small (400 head max) feedlot capability depending on the year market outlook and availability of feed, grain, etc., while primarily a dryland farming operation. With the high input cost of calves and the drought we've experienced the last several years haven't had any winter wheat sufficiently far along to pasture and hence no cattle...
Seems perfectly reasonable to me...and think, if you at some point build a connecting breezeway, it's all same building anyway... :)
I'd like to bury a bunch of the overhead feeds scattered around particularly the house area but at my age doubt I'll ever get the necessary round tuit required...
OK, I've had a continuing hassle develop w/ the ground in the old barn over the last year or so.
Finally, about two months ago I replaced the ground rod w/ new and all seemed well. As of about a week ago, the gremlin is back--there's enough to light a couple 100W bulbs at not quite full intensity and outlets measure full 125V but not enough current to power motors, etc. Clearly it's the ground as all the 240V gear is fully functional.
It's _extremely_ hard to fathom a new rod can have gone south so quickly and we've had sufficient rain that it certainly is the case of excessively dry ground.
Yesterday I ran a jumper directly from the ground bar in the circuit box to the ground and made no difference whatsoever in the symptoms.
It is _all_ 120V circuits, not just one so seems as though not possible to be a failed breaker not passing current; but for the life of me I can't figure out another common-mode cause...
Anybody got any ideas or ever had such a symptom? I may end up calling the pro on this one...was out just last week to help find a broken underground feeder to another of the outbuildings; too bad the symptom hadn't reared it's head again then or woulda' had him take a look then.
What you said is a fact. Just google for "Stray Voltage". My power company checked for this (at no cost to me), because I had a horse quit drinking water, who became ill due to it. Fortunately I caught this in time, and he guzzled a 5 gallon pail of water when I carried it out to him, even though there was a filled 100 gal. stock tank in there.
It was winter, there was a stock tank heater in that tank which was plugged into a GFCI outlet. The GFCI (should) have tripped, but didn't. I took a multimeter and tested between the tank and a metal fence post, and saw a very slight voltage. I then touched the tank and felt a very slight "tickle". That's when I called the power company. They have special meters for testing, and said they saw a voltage at that tank, but got no stray voltage readings anywhere else on the farm.
I replaced the tank heater with a brand new one, and STILL had that slight voltage at the tank. This even puzzled the guys from the power company, who said that I must have a defective *NEW* heater too. I had one more NEW heater on hand. I installed that one and still nothing changed. I got an extension cord and plugged that heater into another outlet. Problem GONE!
The power company said they can not work on "MY" electrical system and said to call an electrician. After they left, I carefully checked that entire circuit and everything was tight, the box had a good ground and so on. That's when I found the reset button on that GFCI would not trip. I replaced that GFCI and everything was fixed. Somehow, that defective GFCI was actually causing the voltage leakage.
You can lead a horse to water....zzzaaaaappppp!
Just a wrap of bright coloured duct tape around the top of the rank, about 4 inched from the top can be enough to convince livestock that it is a "different "tank, but you will likely need to move it a few feet- and do it while they are not looking.
It's a real bugger when the staunchions get "live" in an old-style dairy barn - or as I've seen, the stable cleaner chain. The "live" staunchions resulted from a short from the "hump-stoppers" we installed to keep the cattle from humping up theit backs to take a leak or a crap, resulting in a mess in the stall instead of in the gutter. Just a galvanizsef steel angle hung from a couple of chains over the center of the stall and connected to an electric fence charger. Worked great - only installed on the stalls where cattle had the problem - and only needed to be connected to the fencer sporadically - dumb as cattlebeasts are, they DO remember pain. We found it also worked for "kickers" if adjusted properly. When a cow gets ready to kick, their back goes up - when it hits the shocker, it comes down ral fast - before they get a chance to let fly with a hoof. Since they usually kicked when you were putting on the milker, or taking it off, you had to be carefull not to contact the shocker yourself when milking. It worked a bit better than holding the cow's tail in one hand and giving it a twist when she shifted her weight to "c*ck the trigger" for a kick, or tying a twine to the tail , up over a hook in the ceiling so you could keep the tail up.. I can't remember how the electric fence got connected to the staunchions - but I do remember the cows wouldn't go into their stalls without a lot of coaxing for about a week. I never felt anything while tying them.
I've heard that farming is a really rough business. Not much markup, and always the threat of losing every thing to the bank. Is it the same with cows? Is that why you are doing your own electrical, instead of hiring an electrician company?
Farming, and I presume ranching, is a bit like royalty. One has to be born one or marry one to be one. It would take a huge amount of money to get started. Farmers are usually looking to expand. The cost of equipment can be spread over a larger area. Good luck to someone who just wants to start from scratch. That doesn't apply to the Ted Turner types. He was into raising bison but I have no idea if that's still true. He bought a 26,000 acre ranch at auction in north central Nebraska a few years ago for just under ten million dollars.
To get started from scratch in Dairy in Ontario would be pretty close to 10 million today if you want to run over 50 head of cattle and do all your own field work with new equipment on 240 acres of good farmland.
When a dairy farm goes up for sale around here (Region of Waterloo and Oxford County area) they are very often purchased by Dutch or German farmers who have sold their very expensive land over thare and come to Canada to farm with a few million dollars of cash in their pockets. A
15 or 20 acre farm in the Netherlands will yeild enough money from it's sale to purchace a running 240 acre set-up over here.DerbyDad03 posted for all of us...
A horse is a a horse of course, of course.~~~~~~ Mr. Ed
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