Shocked By Hose Handle!
MrSpock
Here's a weird one: when turning on my hose, I can feel current running
through it. None of water faucets in the house or other hose outlets are
shocking me.
Larry Coutlee
You have an electric circuit in the house that's grounded to the water
pipe. Chase the pipe backwards and then find the ground wire. Follow the
wire to see what it's attached to.
correct it quickly.
FP1
Something like this happened to me last week.
In my case (a house near the ocean) the incoming feed wire from the power
co. was frayed and touching (once in a while ) the pipe leading to the
house,
I called the power co. people and they replaced it right away. It
appeared the salty air had corroded the downpipe and that in turn frayed a
wire.
So check outside too.
But the advise is good - do it right away - get an electrician if you have
to.
Frankie
Joel R. Maillie
Are you standing directly on the ground when turning on the hose? Test the
pipes leading to the hose with a circuit tester and a lead connected to a
proven ground. It may be that you just aren't grounding it when you are
inside touching it.
Sounds REALLY scary, though.
MrSpock <alc...@mail.coos.or> wrote in article
<3319CB...@mail.coos.or>...
hud...@cybernex.net
In <331B69...@ix.netcom.com>, Larry Coutlee <blr...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>MrSpock wrote:
>>
>> Here's a weird one: when turning on my hose, I can feel current running
>> through it. None of water faucets in the house or other hose outlets are
>> shocking me.
>
>pipe. Chase the pipe backwards and then find the ground wire. Follow the
>wire to see what it's attached to.
>
>correct it quickly.
Isn't one's entire electric circuit commonly grounded to one's cold water line?
It sounds to me like there is a questionable outlet somewhere in the network that
is leaking to ground. A ground fault circuit would have detected that and tripped.
It'll take a lot of detective work, but you should be able to isolate which outlet
is leaking to ground. Good luck,
Dunc.
Gary Slusser
The lady said she had been shocked when using her garden hose in bare feet.
There was no ground on the electric panel box. The phone or cable Co. had
their ground on the water line. This is very dangerous. Water lines are not
good ground, best is from panel to outside grounding pin.
hud...@cybernex.net wrote in article <5fg3h8$b68$1...@news.cybernex.net>...
David Buxton
What you need to do is ground that faucet securely to ground.
If copper plumbing is involved, with no plastic segments, then the most
conveniently accessible section of pipe can be connected to the circuit
breaker panel ground. You should be able to measure the "shocking"
voltage with a good volt meater before performing the fix. You could
perform the test, using a high impedance volt meter, and sticking one
probe into a nearby wet lawn and touching the other probe to the faucet.
Then after the fix is in place verify that the voltage reading is zero or
close to zero. For about a dollar you can get an electricians neon test
light. I've used these lots of times and I hold one lead in my fingers
and touch the other lead to the thing I'm testing for voltage. There is a
high resistance in those testers that will limit the current going
through. Or you can run one lead to a screw driver in the lawn. If,
before fixing the problem, you can get the neon light to light up then you
can use it again to verify that the voltage is at least reduced a whole
lot after the fix.
But, what if there is no convenient way to get that faucet grounded back
to the breaker panel. Then you need to verify that none of the rest of
your plumbing is 'hot'. If it is, then you absolutely must get that
plumbing grounded to the panel or sooner or later you will get zinged off
some indoor plumbing, like sitting in the tub and reaching out to touch
something grounded. If for some incredible reason that yard faucet is the
only one that is 'hot', then you could install an 8' ground rod near the
faucet and connect the faucet to the rod with a copper conductor. Then
test with the volt meter to make sure that the fix has properly
accomplished it's purpose. I'd use a high impedance volt meter to do the
final test if grounding to a ground rod near the faucet.
If all this electrical mumo jumbo sounds intimidating, then by all means
get a qualified electrician to fix the problem. We are talking about a
something with lethal potential. So, don't ignore it.
mdm...@ibm.net
In <3319CB...@mail.coos.or>, MrSpock <alc...@mail.coos.or> writes:
>Here's a weird one: when turning on my hose, I can feel current running
>through it. None of water faucets in the house or other hose outlets are
>shocking me.
You may have a ground/neutral reversal somewhere in your house.
M. Mason, Hoboken, N.J.
Mike Pelletier
In article <5fi1ka$g...@bvadm.tek.com>,
David Buxton <David....@tek.com> wrote:
>If for some incredible reason that yard faucet is the
>only one that is 'hot', then you could install an 8' ground rod near the
>faucet and connect the faucet to the rod with a copper conductor. Then
>test with the volt meter to make sure that the fix has properly
>accomplished it's purpose. I'd use a high impedance volt meter to do the
>final test if grounding to a ground rod near the faucet.
I don't think that's permitted by code -- you'd wind up with the
possibility of ground-current loops. It sounds like the grounding system
in his house might be pretty wankered to begin with, like someone reversing
a ground and neutral, or grounding to the water piping system more than
five feet away from the entry, or things like that. It would seem that
a hot hose bibb calls for corrective action more thorough than just
jamming a ground rod in next to the hose bibb.
-Mike Pelletier.
Gary Slusser
I'm sure the solution to this problem is not to ground the faucet, there
should not be stray voltage between the faucet and ground. To me this is a
very dangerous situation. If you ground that faucet and later someone
working on the plumbing cuts the pipe they can break the ground and they
could be electrocuted.
Gary
David Buxton <David....@tek.com> wrote in article
<5fi1ka$g...@bvadm.tek.com>...
> What you need to do is ground that faucet securely to ground.
>
> If copper plumbing is involved, with no plastic segments, then the most
> conveniently accessible section of pipe can be connected to the circuit
> breaker panel ground. You should be able to measure the "shocking"
> voltage with a good volt meater before performing the fix.
<snip>
>
> But, what if there is no convenient way to get that faucet grounded back
> to the breaker panel. Then you need to verify that none of the rest of
> your plumbing is 'hot'. If it is, then you absolutely must get that
> plumbing grounded to the panel or sooner or later you will get zinged off
> some indoor plumbing, like sitting in the tub and reaching out to touch
> something grounded. If for some incredible reason that yard faucet is
the
> only one that is 'hot', then you could install an 8' ground rod near the
> faucet and connect the faucet to the rod with a copper conductor. Then
> test with the volt meter to make sure that the fix has properly
> accomplished it's purpose.
<snip>
David Buxton
Just talked about grounding an outdoor faucet using an 8' grounding
rod -- not the best choice, but something that could be resorted to
if all other more practical measures fail.
>I don't think that's permitted by code -- you'd wind up with the
>possibility of ground-current loops.
The electrical code has no ruling on what you do about grounding or
not grounding an outdoor faucet with an 8' copper rod in the ground.
So, the code has nothing to say about it.
-- When wiring a house or updating the wiring, it is best to assume
that the plumbing is not grounded. If you really really have to, got
to, use a water pipe for a ground then it is very important to prove
that the water pipe is securely grounded before using it as an
electrical source of ground.
-- When you are plumbing your house it is important that you make
sure the plumbing is grounded securely otherwise there is the risk of
a hot wire contacting the plumbing and so electrifying your kitchen
sink or that faucet that we were talking about that you hook your
garden hose up to.
Now lets talk about ground loops. For some incredible reason it is a
very popular notion that ground loops are a seriously deadly menace
that can kill people. That no good electrician or electrical engineer
would be caught dead, or even half dea, letting a ground loop get past
his or her professional installation.
So, lets go looking for ground loops and see if we can determine how
deadly they really are:
* The transformer on the pole out at the street is center tapped and
that center tap is wired down the pole to an 8' copper ground rod.
The same center tap is wired down to your house and at your house it
is ground by one or more 8' ground rods. In my case I had to use two
8' ground rods a few feet apart, at my house. So, we have a ground
loop from the center tap of the transformer, through copper through
the air to my house and to the ground rod there. The loop is closed
through the dirt back to the ground rod at the base of the pole and up
the pole through copper to the transformer's center tap. We also have
a second ground loop because of the two ground stakes at my house.
These are code legislated ground loops that the code requires.
* Old style plumbing had copper and or iron burried back to the street
or the pump in the yard. That plumbing was expected to be grounded.
And so another legislated ground loop. Today, with so much plastic
plumbing the code is not quite so adament that you ground that pipe.
Lets pause for a moment and explain what a ground loop is. A ground
loop is simply a conductive loop that acts like a transformer
secondary winding of one turn. In a transformer the primary winding
generates a magentic field that generates electrical potentials and
current flows in the secondary winding. Stray magentic fields do
cause currents to flow in conductive loops that are not necessarily
part of a "transformer". The lower the resistance of such a loop, the
more current will flow for a given magnetic field situation. Such
magnetic field excited currents will flow through the ground loops
that I described above. They will also flow through the metal body
work of your car or truck. Ground loop currents will flow in the
sheet metal of the breaker box that your breakers are mounted in.
Ground loop currents will flow in all sorts of sheet metal laying
around your house. Tiny amounts of ground loop current will flow in
the gold fillings in your teeth, certainly without killing you. Even
in the metal case of the pacemaker tucked in near your heart, again
without killing you.
So, are there applications where ground loops are to be avoided like
a deadly plague, or at least managed properly by good electrical
engineering? Yes indeed there are:
Audio circuits are a prime example. Your home entertainment system
most likely has a couple dozen ground loops in it. Audio coax cables
connect between various cabinets. Those cabinets are grounded through
several power cords. TV coax, audio coax, etc all furnish lots and
lots of ground loop paths. Those ground loop circuits do carry ground
loop currents that make your audio system beltch out some hum from
the speaker system. Shorten the audio and TV cables, manage those
power cords better in terms of outlets, and so on, and you can reduce
that ground loop generated hum to a tolerable level. So, ground loops
are a major head ache to audio engineering and home entertainment
centers. But, the voltages are typically well below 1/10th of a volt
and so are far below the threshold where Hollywood can tarts dreaming
about the next horror movie.
What about computer systems where you have a computer, display,
keyboard, printer, etc. Digital circuits are far more tolerent of
noise levels than audio circuits are, unless it is digital audio that
you are talking about. So, it is far less likely that ground loops
will mess up your computer system unless you are stringing things from
room to room. (Yes, ground fault problems can make a mess of your
computer system.) Consider the power cords and whether the outlets
are on different circuits all the way back to the breaker box. You
could have a problem if the ground loops get big enough. And that is
more likely to be a problem when several rooms are involved in your
computer system. Computer network systems, LANs, take this into
account so that you can have a building full of computers hooked up.
So, yes indeed, in some contexts you want to eliminate if
possible/practical or at least manage ground loops properly. But,
with regards to that faucet for the garden hose -- creating yet
another ground loop with an 8' foot ground rod is hardly something to
draw back from with a horrified look on your face.
J.Joe Jones
"Gary Slusser" <qwas...@ptd.net> wrote:
>I'm sure the solution to this problem is not to ground the faucet, there
>should not be stray voltage between the faucet and ground. To me this is a
>very dangerous situation. If you ground that faucet and later someone
>working on the plumbing cuts the pipe they can break the ground and they
>could be electrocuted.
>Gary
>David Buxton <David....@tek.com> wrote in article
><5fi1ka$g...@bvadm.tek.com>...
>> What you need to do is ground that faucet securely to ground.
>>
[snip]
>> If for some incredible reason that yard faucet isthe
>> only one that is 'hot', then you could install an 8' ground rod near the
>> faucet and connect the faucet to the rod with a copper conductor. Then
>> test with the volt meter to make sure that the fix has properly
>> accomplished it's purpose.
><snip>
>> If all this electrical mumo jumbo sounds intimidating, then by all means
>> get a qualified electrician to fix the problem. We are talking about a
>> something with lethal potential. So, don't ignore it.
>>
Mike and Gary are both correct, there is no quick fix to this problem
other than immediately finding the source of the problem, anything
less is merely treating the symptom which is unacceptable.
Installation of a ground rod is not insurance that someone would not
get hurt in the future should they come into contact with the
offending pipe and a path to ground with lower resistance than the rod
offers. A good electrician should be able to identify the cause.
J.J.Jones