On 20 Feb 2006 08:12:23 -0800, "Bob"
wrote:

Hello all,

This is the first time I have posted to this group and please excuse
any information in my post that may be inaccurate or lacking detail as
I am VERY inexperienced in electrical wiring.

Now to my problem...

Yesterday I had Dish Network come to my house to install satellite in
my house. Every thing was going smoothly through the rewiring of the
Coax cabling (this was of an older variety and needed to be replaced to
support the satellite signal.) After all the wiring and the dish was
mounted, the technician proceeded to install the two receivers. The
first one went fine, with no problems and while it was downloading
software and guide data, he went to another room in the house to
install the second receiver. He plugged in the second receiver into a
near by surge protector.

He then needed to adjust the wiring coming into the receiver and when
he touched to the receiver box and the wiring on the back got a jolt of
electricity. He said that it felt "like the 110V variety" and that the
current running through the coax should only be about 16V (I think that
is what he said). So he unplugged the unit from the surge protector
and made some changes to the cabling and then decided to try pluggin
the power cable directly into the wall outlet and it tripped the
circuit breaker in the main breaker box.

He said that it was a was possibly a defective unit and went to the
truck to get a replacement. He brought this new unit in and hooked up
all the cabling prior to hooking up the power. He then tried to
plugged the power into the wall outlet and before the plug was even
inserted in the wall jack it sparked and left a black area around the
screw that holds the face plate on.

We took the receiver box to another room and plugged it in and
everything was ok. So we decided to run a heavy-duty extension cord
from that outlet to the room where the receiver needed to be hooked up
in. This is currently how things are but I would like to rolve the
issues for that outlet near the location of the receiver. I do not
want a bright orange extension cord running from one room to another.

Here is some general information about the electrical wiring in my
house (the little that I know)...

--The house was built in the late '60s or early '70s.
--I believe the home inspection stated that some rooms have reverse
polarity and/or no ground.
--A new service coming into the house and new circuit breaker box was
installed prior to me purchasing the house. I was under the
understanding that the issue above was corrected when this was done
(because this new service/circuit box was another issue flagged on the
inspection).
--The whole house has finished walls and electrical wiring is not
easily accessible.

My questions...

-- Could reverse polarity be the culprit? Or lack of proper grounding?
-- How can I test for this in this outlet (and others that may be a
problem)?
-- If this is a polarity issue, I believe that I can fix this myself.
Is there any way to test to make sure that this issue is resolved
before I plug the receiver into that outlet so that I do not fry this
one too?
-- If a professional gets involved, can any one give me a ball park
idea of how much charges can be? (for example how much to correct
grounding, etc)

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Bob

Get yourself one of those polarity testers for about $7 and test the
outlets. If the polarity is reversed, reverse the wires on the
outlets. It's not that big of a deal to do. Just be sure to shut off
the power first.

Of course, if you prefer, I will do the job for $10,000 plus the cost
of my airfare.....