Shocked!

[Dean Hoffman]

Chocolate dipped onion on a stick.

[Robert Green]

news:l4hpoi$a41$ [e-mail]:

somewhere is energizing that > pipe, and the pipe itself is not properly grounded.

You forgot a third fault - the OP is a mental defective who thinks making people believe that lives are in danger is entertaining. Hmmm, where have we just seen this same sort of behavior before? In a moderated group he'd be canned faster than a tuna.

Doesn't matter if one of our own is unbalanced enough to play on people's good natured concern for their fellow man. To our troll's dismay, in the end I think a lot of good came out of the discussion. I learned more NEC stuff and so, I think, did a few others.

The best part is that I ended up getting the Sperry tester recommended by Nate (Sperry VD6505 for $15 from Amazon and free shipping!) and I love it, too.

[Robert Green]

somewhere is energizing that > pipe, and the pipe itself is not properly grounded.

P.S. I forgot to add that in retrospect yours was the first and best answer. As the thread progressed and we explored all the potential sources for energized plumbing, it became clear this was a case clearly too complex for anyone but an expert. The severe downside for guessing wrong (death) made the best advice would be to get an electrician or even call the power company.

Another lesson here is that it is probably always wise to assume the poster knows less than more about 110VAC electricity and work your way up re: suggestions when a knowledge level is established through Q & A. We should have been more suspicious (and Tom R. was) when the answers to the questions that were asked were not forthcoming very quickly, as they would if someone were really getting shocked by their faucets.

[Robert Green]

Congratulations! Yours is the second right answer (get a professional) had this been an actual situation with human life at risk instead of dumb-ass troll attack. If we don't know anything about the OP's skill level, with electrical work it's better to underestimate it.

[Davej]

Is this after you walk across the carpeting when the humidity is low?

[Robert Green]

This is what an electrician or an experienced DIY might do, but I am not sure I would recommend such a procedure to a person whose electrical smarts are unknown. Even for a moderately experienced person this could prove a difficult case to diagnose because the rules turn upside down when your typical ground conductor is somehow energized. Where does the other lead of your voltmeter go? Is it a reliable test point?

Turns out this troll bait is a great teaching moment for people who want to learn more. I bought the meter that you recommended. Now the question is how best to test it on deliberately created "faults" so that I become familiar with its operation and how to interpret the beeping patterns and set the sensitivity dial.

I am not sure I want to try energizing the water pipes but it would be nice to be able to detect even low voltage levels on a water pipe. Not even sure how I would inject a voltage from a doorbell transformer onto the pipes without popping a breaker.

This is actually the way a skilled person would diagnose the problem. In the programming world the process is called "grunt and crank" as you step through each possible case. The trick is how to read voltage on the pipes and that little Sperry tester looks like an ideal tool for that job. Good find.

Now if you could only figure out a way to make sure we don't get trolled again. (-: I'd like to drive some rods - vampire movie style.

[Robert Green]

The idea of the OP, if he were a newbie, running around clamping energized pipes with a car booster cable gives me just a little pause, especially if it's likely to blow a breaker. I know it makes sense to check the meter because more and more water meters do not provide electrical continuity to ground, but I like Nate's proposal to deactive device by device and circuit by circuit until the voltage goes away. But that's advice for a person who's capable of doing his own electrical work competently enough to pass inspection. I'd say that's less than half the people I know that do their own work. (-:

I may be missing something, Clare, but what will you have learned if the breaker pops that you didn't know before? It reveals that the ground is energized, but we already know that from the shocks?

And how would repairing ground continuity through the meter, if there was none, make the voltage in the pipes go away? No properly functioning device should be dumping enough current into the ground to be detectable at multiple faucets, AFAIK.

While I think jumpering/checking same is a great idea *after* the fault is found, I don't think it would aid in diagnosing a problem like this. Worse, still, the jumper could cause a fairly serious spark. If the troll had done his own gas piping, and the gas meter was nearby he might be standing in a cloud of gas when he connects the test bypass cable and then he would incinerate in a greasy trollish fireball. (-: You wouldn't want that on your conscience? Now me, I wouldn't mind so much.

[clare]

It will tell you which circuit is causing the problem without having to shut off all the circuits and search for what could be a needle in a hatstack. It will also eliminate an interupted ground at the meter as the problem if it does not solve the voltage on the waterline problem.

It will pull the water line to ground potential. It only takes MILLIAMPS of leakage to give a tingle.

Now you are REALLY grasping for straws. If there was enough fault current to cause a serious flash issue, it would have but the OP on hnis ass, not just a tingle, and there is no reason to suspect a gas leak - the OP would have smelt that. And see my previous comment about finding the problem.

Are you an electrician, or have you ever worked under one? I ended up as a Mechanic after working with my dad as an electrician as a tean

- and electricity in a car behaves very similarly to electricity in a house - and then I ended up as a computer/electronics technician.

I know electricity - and I have a lot of respect for it. I try real hard not to give dangerous advice. That electrical system needed grounding -

[Robert Green]

Hmmm. I am having a little trouble imagining what happens if there's no good ground in a house, i.e. the cable going to a ground rod is broken and the water pipes are not continously connected to the feeder from the street. Is the piping now energized because it's bonded to the neutral at the panel but it's not connected to a ground?

What's even more interesting is that my bathroom sink faucet lights up the Sperry tester on its highest setting but the shower faucets do not. Now it's time to break out the DVM and see what's going on. (-:

[krw]

If there is no ground return on the house, there is still 240V across the hot conductors but nothing holding the house "neutral" at ground. Therefore, neutral will float somewhere in between the two hot conductors, depending on the relative load on the two conductors (the loads become a voltage divider between the two hots and neutral). Since the neutral is connected to the safety ground at the entrance, safety ground is now allowed to "move", accordingly. You now have a potentially (boo!) dangerous situation where everything in the house in energized. If you touch (metal) plumbing, you become part of the load. Not good.

Many years ago we had a neutral pull off the house. All sorts of weird things started happening until we figured it out. Basically, we had 75V on one side of the house and 175 on the other, but that changed depending on what was turned on. The power company was there in minutes after the call. They know exactly how dangerous this situation is.

A DVM will probably lie to you. Their extremely high impedance will allow capacitive coupling to show up as a phantom voltage. You need to load the circuit you're testing to see if it's real. This is why some people prefer the old analog meters, like Simpson 260s.

[trader4]

I woudn't say you become part of the load. The load is still between the two hot legs or between one hot leg and the neutral. You are not connected there. I agree that what you will have is the neutral floating and not being tied to earth ground potential. Hence as you point out there can be a voltage difference between the neutral at the house and earth at the house and you could get a shock, depending on how large that potential difference is. And it's not just the water pipes that are affected. For example, an appliance with a metal case that has a grounded cord, will have it's metal at a potential that can be different than the wet earth you're standing on.

Which is very different from what Robert is talking about. The neutral is the main path for the unbalanced portion of the current to flow back to the transformer. Without a neutral, you have all the unbalanced current, which could be very large, forced into trying to use the ground path, which has unknown resistance. With what Robert is describing, that neutral connection between house and transformer is intact and functioning.

[TomR]

Since you just joined this topic, you may not know that the OP already admitted (on 10/31/2013) that this was just a fake post and that none of what he was posting was true.

[Wes Groleau]

Must have been a post I never saw. It could well be fake, but "Happy Halloween" is not proof of that.

[TomR]

Well, "Happy Halloween" is not proof that the whole hting was a fake. But, shown below is the context in which it was written, after the whole fire B.S. and after people (like me) asked what the cause of the alleged fire was:

Happy Halloween!

[Wes Groleau]

I also fail to see how two people wondering whether it is a troll proves that it is.

The OP responded to that on Halloween with "Happy Halloween" Definitely a bit odd, but far from an admission of fakery.

[TimR]

On the other hand, if we hear from the OP again in early April..................

[Robert Green]

OK - that's fair enough. I'll admit I did not consider that when I replied.

I've just been taught not to trip breakers unless it's absolutely necessary as they have a finite number of fault cycles before they fail. That means I wouldn't have seized upon that method to diagnose a fault.

My experience is with the "grunt and crank" method of shutting off breakers one by one (as Nate recommended) and comes from dealing with X10 equipment issues where tripping a breaker deliberately usually doesn't gain anything. X10 troubleshooting involves looking for sources of noise or signal attenuation.

In this case, however, I will gladly concede that it would save time in hunting down a likely source of the problem. Still, I think it's a very long shot that the ground shunt on the meter was missing or had failed. Therefore it would NOT have been the first place I looked, that's for sure.

But even milliamps of current leakage is impermissible, AFAIK, and that's why wet areas are now required (when doing new work) to be protected by GFCIs in most cases. (Hope that's broad enough for the NDBF's.) You can be electrocuted if you manage to get those milliamps running across your chest. Even if you repaired an open ground shunt at the meter, wouldn't you agree that something's still wrong with the wiring?

says that

If I recall correctly from previous discussions a GFCI trips when there is an imbalance of as little as 5 milliamperes. In any event had this been a real post and not a troll, we have to consider that the OP was experiencing not just a tingle, but a serious "zap" at several different points in the house. That, indicates to me (and to a number of others here) that there's a serious amount of electrical energy reaching the pipes. A perhaps lethal amount.

OMG. That was meant to be a joke, hence the (-: smiley face. But more importantly, and more realistically, bridging the meter means there's a chance that he'll touch both ends of the circuit accidentally and if there is some sort of serious ground fault the current could pass from hand to hand (and through his chest) - perhaps the most likely way to cause electrocution.

While bridging the water meter with a car battery booster cable may be useful advice to someone with excellent electrical skills, I just don't see it being good advice for a tyro. In these sorts of potentially fatal cases, it really is important to assume very low knowledge levels on the part of the OP and high levels of lethality. Water and electricity are a bad combination.

The other issue I have with that recommendation is that assumes that the amount of current leaking is negligible. That's not supported by the OP's original description of not just a tingle but a strong zap that appeared to be spreading throughout the house.

Can you say that with certainty? I think in such a situation it depends on where he's standing when he experiences the tingle/zap, how much current is flowing and how it is reaching the ground. A tingle at the basement sink wearing thick rubber boots could easily turn into an electrocution death in the shower with the metal supply pipes reaching the grounded drain pipes through the OP's body.

I would be very reluctant to diagnose this as a small current leak just because at one point in the house he felt only a tingle - especially when he later reported a strong zap at a different location touching different items.

that. And see my

I'll have to remember to use the tag next time. FWIW, just for background info, my dad was a materials science engineer for the nuke sub program and they spent a lot of time developing spark-free beryllium copper hammers and sparkless flashlights because of the explosion hazard. So I've grown up thinking that unnecessary spark generation is a bad idea.

Old habits die hard and I am not inclined to generate sparking when there's another way to solve the problem. And yes, for my hyped up NDBF detractors out there (and you know who you are) I *do* assume the OP's not living in a submarine - although with trolls you never know - but still, throwing unnecessary sparks doesn't seem like good practice to me. YMMV.

So you're saying you're not a licensed electrician? (-: We have something in common, then. Neither am I. But I know enough about electricity to know that when you're getting ANY kind of shock from your plumbing, whether it's a tingle or a zap, you have a serious problem that likely requires a professional to diagnose. Any delay in obtaining one represents a potentially fatal hazard to the occupants of the house and perhaps even the neighbors if the problem is "at the pole" and external to the house wiring.

Granted. But don't you think that with the level of technical expertise the OP seemed to have provided (low) that the only real solution was to shut down the power and get a professional in to diagnose the situation? Or even the power company? Think of what might happened if, in the described situation, someone else in the house decided to take a shower while the OP was diddling around taking meter readings, jumpering water meters, etc. with the system still live.

The tingling becoming a zapping and then appearing to worsen and spread throughout the house was, IMHO, clearly a warning that implied great danger. To that end, a fair number of other respondents recognized that danger immediately. Once it was clear these were not static shocks, the power should have been shut off and the power company informed and a professional summoned. If the OP wanted to poke around the unenergized system with a flashlight while waiting, that seems pretty unlikely to cause more problems.

From what I've researched about the problem the fault could be external to the house wiring and affect more than the OP's residence. While he's fooling around with meters that he may not know how to use properly or jumpering devices that may have nothing to do with the problem, a neighbor could be electrocuted because the OP delayed calling the proper authorities. This is very much *unlike* a clogged dishwasher drain line where there's little risk in trying to fix the problem other than breaking a pipe nipple or banging up your hands. A current leak into the plumbing is serious business.

If you smelled gas in your basement would you go around looking for the source or call the gas company? Can the average homeowner really compete with experts who are equipped with sophisticated gas sniffers to detect the source of even the smallest amount of gas? I know what I would do (and have done). Call the pros because such cases aren't just home repair issues, they are potentially life and death ones.

Another point to note is *why* would a water meter ground suddenly fail and be repairable by jumpering? It just doesn't seem to me to be the first place to look in a situation like this because it just seems so unlikely that the meter shunt would suddenly go bad. I would look to recent plumbing repairs or devices hooked into ground via the water pipes that have failed and are dumping current into the supply pipes.

Well, I do agree that in such a case it's likely there's a grounding failure, but that could be in any number of places and from any number of causes. If the OP wasn't a stinking troll, I would have next asked him what has changed recently in the house? Was some device added that was grounded to a water pipe located far from the panel area? Was a new water meter installed? (It would have to have been by idiots if they failed to shunt the ground). Was there a plumbing repair made with plastic pipe or fittings? Did he see linemen working nearby or someone doing excavating?

My suggestion to him involved not touching anything electrical and merely mapping out any potential points where electricity could be entering the water supply piping. That was in addition to calling the electric company, the water company and an electrician because of even the remote possibility that it's a systemic problem that might be affecting the neighbors.

Mapping out the possible points where electricity is "leaking" might have helped saved some time for the electrician if it turned out that a failed device *was* injecting power into the water lines. More importantly, it was a *completely* passive activity that could be performed by a person of even low electrical skills. It could be done with the main breaker off and more importantly without exposing the OP to any kind of shock trying to fix the problem or diagnose it himself.

So I still strongly stand by that advice rather than recommending the OP start jumpering water meters, take meter readings without knowing whether he's working with a good ground, "feel" for tingles or do anything else that might have had shock risks or complicated or altered the situation for the professionals who would eventually have to diagnose it.

You must have heard/seen this joke rate card for electricians:

$100 per hour $125 per hour if you watch

$150 per hour if you tried to fix it yourself

[Robert Green]

Agreed. Even less voltage than that can be fatal!

that says that "Death from an electric shock (ventricular fibrillation*) can occur when the touch voltage is above 30V RMS resulting in as little as 30 milliamperes of current flowing though the body. This can occur when improper neutral-to-case connections are made and the neutral is opened."

[Dean Hoffman]

I like that Mike Holt site. I needed information a couple times for my work. It explained things plainly.

[Robert Green]

< If the water feed to the house is non metallic, you need to install or verify that you have a properly sized bonding conductor going from a 3/4" cold water pipe to your electric service neutral/ground bar. Also be sure you have proper grounding electrodes on the service.>

Is it likely that's the cause of a problem that seems to have suddenly occurred? How would your typical poster even know if he had a metallic or non-metallic supply line? AFAIK, they're often underground and invisible.

This certainly strikes me as something a professional needs to examine because there are so many different ways the pipes could have become energized, including some that are external the house wiring.

It's a question of skill sets and experience. Adding new circuits or replacing a breaker is child's play compared to determining what would suddenly cause the house faucets to become (perhaps lethally) energized. A situation like this is not really amenable to a newbie screwing around looking for possible causes while his wife dies taking a shower. The numerous technical answers given probably should have been phrased "When the electrician arrives, some of the things he might look for are . . . "

Unless the OP is *very* skilled electrically speaking, and that's doubtful from the little information he presented, he needs to consult a professional because the worst case scenarios could be very bad. Fatally bad.

As my grandma used to say, you have to determine what things in life are real tragedies and which are just burned potatoes. This could be a real tragedy if not handled correctly.