Sparky:
First thanks for responding, When I first got zapped I went back out to the panels to make sure that everything was really off, it was.
So since I was replacing the existing 3-wire receptacle with gfci s when I cut the ground off the receptacle the voltage disappeared from the hot to ground, also removed the grounding wire from the water pipe in the kitchen.
This is a 5 apartment complex with a compost of items old panels add on meter bases shodding grounding, surely if I were an inspector I would shut the place down until they upgraded the system. The panels are located above the laundry area so if you need to access any panel the washer and dryer have to be removed, etc.
In these old panels and there are five old ones one Sq.D for the house panel, they are overstuffed. The lugs used for the Grounding conductor(which is No.4 copper) has two of them a feed-through, and a couple extra cables used as grounding paths for individual circuits, from these two lugs a bar runs to the bottom of the panel to the neutral bus and it has 4 screws and of course there are a couple of extral whites there, the whold system is an acccident waiting to happen, and just seems to be a generator of ground currents.
I informed the owner and he said he was told to do that by his cousin, Who was an electrician, so they have these 'Piggy-backed'grounds everywhere, and this was done so that the owner could install the 3-wire without having to add any gfci s. The scary part is after I told the owner that I was shocked off the grounding conductor, he admitted that he had to on more than one occasion, and thought it was pretty funny. This kind of condition I think is serious and he refuses to do anyting about it. When the apartment is fully rented there can be as many as 20 people there at anyone time, I would think that the voltage rises and falls with usage.
I have recommended that it be fixed immediately but havent gotten any response from the owner.
Thanks again for the response
-Mark-
