ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Ground??

This building does have its own grounding electrode doesn't it? If you bonded the neutral in your feeder to the equipment ground bar in the subpanel instead of carrying a equip grounding conductor in your feeder that could cause problems with static electricity.

You mention in your post, installing "triplex" from the service to this building. Did you connect to a grounding electrode, such as waterpipe(if available) or a ground rod? If so, did you bond the grounding electrode conductor, the grounded conductor and the equipment ground conductor together (as you would at the service)?
If there is a waterpipe the comes from the building where the service is located, then you cannot install as explained above, and you will need to have "quadplex" installed with the connection to the panel mentioned treated like a subpanel.

Thanks to all.

There are several interesting points here to be looked at. The one that rings the bell the loudest is the electric fence charger. I do recall that there is two chargers located in this facility. I spoke with the owner again friday on the phone. I asked him how the chargers were grounded and he wasn't sure. I suggested that he check into that and I will return for some further investigation.

The building does have a water supply running to it but, it is via plastic line. I am using triplex as a feeder to the panel in this building. The building does have it's own grounding electrode. The grounded service conductor, grounding electrode conductor, and eguipment grounding conductors are all bonded at the panel.

However, I am curious to see how he has the fence charger grounded. Also, in my conversation with him on friday, he stated that he had a 20 amp breaker trip in another area of the building. He said that this has happened before and he just resets them.

I believe that before I am done, I will have to go through every circuit and connection in this facility to eliminate all possiblities. This could be one of those never-ending nightmares if I don't.

Sounds like it would not hurt to call the manufacturer. Maybe they could offer some insight.
Maybe try some surge protection or a isolation transformer.

I have already talked to the manufacturer and so has the owner. They offer no assistance whatsoever. They tell us that it is some type of surge that is burning up the timer board, However, They don't have any idea of what is actually happening. They just replace the timer board and return it.

The owner now has it plugged into two daisy-chained surge protectors.

How would the isolation transformer work? Would that be a 120/240 transformer with an isolated ground, or what?

the neutral the ground and all equipment grounds are all tied together? is that what you said?what kind of electride is it ? is it a plate? those plates arent very good.Shouldnt the bare neutral in the triplex go to the bar and the electrode to the panel enclosure?

Merlin,
I know this is not about the problem, but it does offer some food for thought......

http://www.pq.goeke.net/PQReport1.html

High speed centrifuges need clean sweet grounds to bleed off the 'Van de Graff' static charge generated by the motion of the device through a fluid ( air ).

I would not trust any conductor other than copper to carry away this static voltage.

The voltages induced can run to 10,000 plus -- depending....

I'd suspect that the device may have lost some internal bonding.