Kids complained they got a shock from the stove.
I put a meter on it, a pan on the burner while turned on is 40 volts above ground. The rest of the stove metal seems to be at ground.
The burners look in good shape but it's an old stove. Burners normally have ceramic insulation, right? Is it time to replace them?
All burners are like that? Or only one. If only one, then replace it.
Probably just static.
How old is it? The older ones used the neutral as a return path for the
110V clock & light. They were wired with 2 hots & a neutral, no ground.MikeB
Any electric leak is likely to be more than 40 volts as the burners run on
240 volts. Normally people and children don't touch the pan especially when the stove is on. The pan is metal, the stove is metal, it all should be the same electrial potential. The stove is (or should be grounded) so that any leak will trip the fuse or breaker. Probably as said earlier, static shock from someone with rubber soled shoes/slippers jumping to the grounded stove.
Faulty element and/or the element is ungrounded? Best to trouble shoot it and perhaps replace the element as a precaution. But the 40 volts may be just the sensitive test meter picking up voltage through capacitive coupling; not a real 'short' between the element and the metal pan. Try connecting a light bulb between the metal pan and the grounded metal stove. If it lights you have 'real' leakage (some times incorrectly called a 'short-circuit'') through the element to to the metal pan.
If they got a shock from the stove what were they standing on at the time?
Or, as suggestred was it just static discharge as sometimes happens in very dry air conditions. You walk across a room, touch something metal, large or grounded and get a spark from your finger tip!
That is possible, but easily checked. Static is a one shot deal. If a second touch or holding the stove gives a shock, it is not static.
I just looked at our 20 year old GE electric stove and the element casings are grounded through the strip of metal bridging the two ends of the element. You can see that strip in this image:
So, it's unlikely that the element surface would be at a potential other than that of the rest of the stove's metal parts.....Unless maybe someone installed an incorrect element which didn't have the right "fit" to make the grounding system described above work as it should.
I'm no electric stove mavinn, but I think it very unlikely that any electric stoves would be manufactured without SOME means of grounding the element casings, for obvious reasons.
So, if the OP is measuring a voltage on the element casing with respect to the rest of the stove metal SOMETHING isn't right and he'd better start looking harder to find out what that is.
I'd start by unplugging the stove from its power source and using an ohmmeter to check whether the element casings show a very low resistance between them and the rest of the stove metal. If one or more don't, figure out what's supposed to be connecting them to the stove metal and fix whatever's wrong.
Jeff
Think about that again, EXT.
The heating element inside the burner casing is a resistor, and depending upon just where along its length leakage to the casing occurs, the measured voltage could be anywhere from zero, for a leak half way along the length of the heating element, to 120 volts, for a leak right at one end or the other. You'll never measure 240 volts unless the stove power wiring has been horribly misinstalled.
All of which presuumes that whatever means the stove manufacturer employed to make sure the element casing was connected to the rest of the stove metal has failed or been disabeled by a sloppy repair or use of an incorrect part.
Normally people and children don't touch the pan
The stove may be properly grounded, but that in itself does not insure that the element casing is grounded. It SHOULD be, but a sloppy repair job or installing an incorrect element for that model stove can result in the element casing NOT being connected to the stove metal.
so that any leak will trip the fuse or breaker.
Not ANY leak, but one from near the end of the heating element MIGHT.
Probably as
Jeff
Years ago, I worked on a stove with a similar problem. The answer turned out to be that the burners are SUPPOSED to ground to the metal cook top. This one, the shocking burner, wasn't properly grounded. I drilled a hole, put in a screw, and then grounded the burner to the cook top with some bare copper wire (under the cook top of course).
Since 2009, everyone in the family has been electrocuted and died.....
I'm poring through these and this observation seems helpful, but I would really appreciate if somebody could explain exactly what is meant by the term "element casing". That's a mystery.
Thanks.
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