Neon lights - 10/10/10 04:27 AM
I have a customer who has neon lighting around his business exterior. I was on his roof checking on another project with the manager up there with me. The manager started walking around his roof area while I was checking on the other project. He called me over to some flex that was feeding the transformers for the neon lights. It was making a buzzing sound. As I was checking it, my finger brushed up against the flex and I got a small tingle. I got my tester and checked to see if there was any voltage on the flex and found out there was around 85 to 90 volts from the flex to a piece of conduit right below it. The conduit actually had little white dots where the flex had been touching it, and also the conduit had a rusty area in the same area. Other parts of the conduit had no discoloration. I checked other parts of the flex around the roof and the voltage was not as high as it was where we heard the buzzing sound. Do these flex carry regular current carrying condutors to the tubes, or are there just electodes in them? I haven't worked much with neon lights, but I did tell him it needed to be checked out. That much voltage on the exterior of the flex could pose a shock problem, don't you think??? Thanks for the input..