ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Update on the "HOT" water & question

Sparky,
It will always spark in this type of isntallation because the water pipe is tied to the utility grounded conductor at the next house placing the water pipe in parallel with the grounded conductor.
Don

Don
That is why I would like to see the cold water pipe bonded only after the water main (the water mains usually have a dielectic installed), and a Ufer ground being the grounding electrode in all new dwelling units. Then we could eliminate ground rods, which I think are mostly a waste of effort and money. I have measured many ground rod connections and the value is much higher than 25 ohms. And the neighbors problems stay the neighbors problem.
What do you think?

Pierre

Just my 2 cents. Is there an underground utility transformer on the property? That happened here in my neck of the woods. We feel that the fault lies with the POCO. Their primary cable is leaking current into the earth. The way we found it was that the EC disconnected the meter and there was still voltage on the water pipe. He also disconnected the telco and the CATV. He still had voltage. ( about 10 volts) One last thing to look for, any plastic water filters? They might need to be bonded.

Had the same problem last week. I was able to use my greenlee tester that has a single touch prob for voltage, and then went down the panel shuting off breakers till it went away. It turned out the ridgid conduit to the garage from the 1940's and the clothe rx was getting/is the problem. I am scheduled to dig it up and install pvc etc. But for now more shocks.

Phil

Sorry! I meant but for now no more shocks.

PS this will help you find the circuit that is in question.

Phil

It looks like the problem is POCO "leaking" current into the ground. I turned the main outside disco off and removed the cable and phone grounds from the house ground. It read 17 volts from the pipe to the ground.

OK, let me see! You say that you read a pipe close to the panel and got 0 volts, and about 1 ohm.....right? Well you might want to look at the resistance through the pipes. Sometimes you get resistance through the pipes because of bad solder joints. Check your resistance from the spigot and at the pipe close to the panel ( where you got your readings). I believe that you will see resistance between the two points.

The guy called me today to tell me what the poco said. They told him that they were aware of the problem and not to worry about it. They said because he lives at the end of a line, they have too much current flowing in the area and it's getting into the ground. They have plans to put a different transformer in to try and stop the problem.

I find it hard to believe, well not really, that the poco views this as "normal".

Good thing the water co. doesn't have too much water in the area or you'd have that on the ground as well.

I wonder if the telco has too many lines available? Must be pretty noisy on the phone.

Is there natural gas available? Well, let's not "go there..."

I had a few occasions of folks being shocked from appliances and such. Every incident there was voltage from the spigot to earth. every incident turned out to be a loose neutral crimp on the service drop. FWIW