Hello all,
This is the first time I have posted to this group and please excuse any information in my post that may be inaccurate or lacking detail as I am VERY inexperienced in electrical wiring.
Now to my problem...
Yesterday I had Dish Network come to my house to install satellite in my house. Every thing was going smoothly through the rewiring of the Coax cabling (this was of an older variety and needed to be replaced to support the satellite signal.) After all the wiring and the dish was mounted, the technician proceeded to install the two receivers. The first one went fine, with no problems and while it was downloading software and guide data, he went to another room in the house to install the second receiver. He plugged in the second receiver into a near by surge protector.
He then needed to adjust the wiring coming into the receiver and when he touched to the receiver box and the wiring on the back got a jolt of electricity. He said that it felt "like the 110V variety" and that the current running through the coax should only be about 16V (I think that is what he said). So he unplugged the unit from the surge protector and made some changes to the cabling and then decided to try pluggin the power cable directly into the wall outlet and it tripped the circuit breaker in the main breaker box.
He said that it was a was possibly a defective unit and went to the truck to get a replacement. He brought this new unit in and hooked up all the cabling prior to hooking up the power. He then tried to plugged the power into the wall outlet and before the plug was even inserted in the wall jack it sparked and left a black area around the screw that holds the face plate on.
We took the receiver box to another room and plugged it in and everything was ok. So we decided to run a heavy-duty extension cord from that outlet to the room where the receiver needed to be hooked up in. This is currently how things are but I would like to rolve the issues for that outlet near the location of the receiver. I do not want a bright orange extension cord running from one room to another.
Here is some general information about the electrical wiring in my house (the little that I know)...
--The house was built in the late '60s or early '70s.
--I believe the home inspection stated that some rooms have reverse polarity and/or no ground.
--A new service coming into the house and new circuit breaker box was installed prior to me purchasing the house. I was under the understanding that the issue above was corrected when this was done (because this new service/circuit box was another issue flagged on the inspection).
--The whole house has finished walls and electrical wiring is not easily accessible.
My questions...
-- Could reverse polarity be the culprit? Or lack of proper grounding?
-- How can I test for this in this outlet (and others that may be a problem)?
-- If this is a polarity issue, I believe that I can fix this myself. Is there any way to test to make sure that this issue is resolved before I plug the receiver into that outlet so that I do not fry this one too?
-- If a professional gets involved, can any one give me a ball park idea of how much charges can be? (for example how much to correct grounding, etc)
Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Bob