ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area current on GES

Bigb,
Are there any interruptions such as a water filter near the water main without a bonding jumper around it ar a missing jumper around the water meter? Also, I'm sure you have already checked the lugs at the neutral in the panel as well as the meter housing...Sure sounds like a neutral going bad.

50 yr old house, I start thinking K&T... Maybe an outlet or two with grounds to plumbing all over the house, which was acceptable for grounded outlets for some time... A short to unbonded plumbing. Did they have any plumbing work done?

50 yr old house, I start thinking K&T

50 years would put the house being built in 1955. That's the time when they started to add the ground bonding tape to type AC, first appeared with 12/2 and 12/3. Many houses were wired with AC. NM was popular then too, the fabric covered type with the undersized ground wire.

In short 1955 was decades after K&T.

-Hal

That was the way our 1954 house was wired. My understanding was if you had a government backed loan like "GI" it was required to have a grounding path in the wiring method at that time. That is what my dad said anyway. One of my first electrical experiences was retrofitting receptacles to 3 prong with my dad and granddad (an electrician)
I know in 1971 when I bought my first house of my own they told me it wouldn't pass the GI bill inspection but they wouldn't say why. Now I assume it was the aluminum wire.
It didn't bother me since I did have the down payment and they matched the GI interest rate.
The whole "GI inspection" thing may just be for folks in the DC area since others in flyover country have never heard of it.

BTW my ex still lives there and has never had a problem with the wire.

Well here's an update. The POCO re spliced at the xformer and weatherhead. No shocks for a week, but the current was still on the GEC just like before, so I have to conclude that it is normal like Don said. The shock must come from another source. Sure enough, they called today, the Old Lady got zapped again, pretty good they said. Also the caregiver. They took note of everything that was on at the time as I had asked them to do. 2 kitchen lights, the bath light and the microwave. Tomorrow I will go check these circuits.
Also I had another thought. The water mains are out front, in the street, with each house having it's water service entering at the front. The electrical services are in the back, they are bonded to the piping at the back spigot. Our AHJ's allow this, even though the code says the first 5 feet where it enters the building. Now in light of this, suppose a neighbor had an open neutral and their current was returning thru the water pipes. This current could enter the neighboring homes at the front, pass thru the homes piping then out the back where it would find the neutral at the bond. If the interior piping had some resistance, this would allow for a shock when another path, such as the Old Lady, was introduced, could it not? Or am I thinking too hard???

Just as food for thought:

In the 1950s, this was a common way of obtaining an equipment ground for the bath, kitchen, and laundry circuits:

BigB,
What are the tow items that are being touched when they receive the shock?
Don

greftwell

The 'GI' housing standards began with the 'VA loan' shortly after the government noticed 'junk shacks' standing as collateral in the post-war real estate boom. Take a look at "Mr. Blandings Dream House" which BTW is an excellent tutorial for change orders.

The same standard was applied to FHA loans, too.

It was these standards that kept carpeting out of tract homes until 1964, hence hardwood everywhere. Such standards included what size space constituted a bedroom, etc.

We now accept these norms as part of the building code to be universally applied, but they all came from this legislation.

IIRC the FHA loan standard still is the basis for all residential finance. It has been absorbed by all other consequent entities such as FNMA ( Fannie Mae } which handles a staggering percentage of wholesale residential finance.

( Almost all local real estate lenders kick their loans up to FNMA (sell them) in hefty bundles and retain an on-going loan service fee. Properties that don't meet the standard are not acceptable collateral to FNMA. The lender cannot resell the 'paper' (the loan) and that pretty much kills the deal.)

In its early years these standards were almost always tougher than local building codes -- if they even existed. That's why no matter how great the building boom no one cranks out the hole-in-the-wall shacks that were so common in the 1920's Florida and New York booms.

You'll still see closets pitched as bedrooms in Hawaiian rentals, though.

Don, I can't be sure if it is the faucet and metal sink or the faucet and the floor. I am pretty sure it is the faucet and metal sink since they said they had shoes on.But if you ask them, they claim it is from the water itself. It is an older house and the faucet is wall mounted, no contact with sink. Are you thinking I should just bond the two and call it a day?

No. There is something that is energizing an unbonded metallic object. You need to find the voltage source. Maybe bonding would cause enough current to flow to open the OCPD, but it could be a high impedance fault, and the bonding may just cause enough current to flow so that a fire results.
Don