On Jun 12, 1:14 am, Wayne Whitney wrote:
On 2007-06-11, Stormin Mormon wrote:

1) Why would a brand new furnace be leaking power?

Good question. Note that in order for someone to be shocked as
described, there must be a double fault. That is, a live conductor
must be energizing some metal parts, which are themselves not properly
bonded. If you ensure that all the metal parts (hot and cold water
pipe, gas pipe, furnace frame) are properly bonded to the EGC in the
building service, then a fault in the furnace should trip the breaker.

2) Why isn't the power going out the neutral and ground?

If there is a return path that parallels the proper neutral path, some
current will always flow on it. So a person will get a mild shock
when standing on the shower floor and touching the plumbing because
they complete a circuit, one that is fairly high resistance compared
to the "usual" return path.

And that the solution is to run a new ground wire out the wall, and
sink a ground stake right outside the wall with the panel box.

This in and of itself will not help you, and under bizarre
circumstances it could make the problem worse. You having a bonding
problem, not an earthing problem. Earthing provides protection in the
case of overvoltage; bonding provides protection in the case of
accidentally energizing metal parts.

Cheers, Wayne


Bonding without proper grounding can still get you killed. You could
have all the nearby metal parts bonded together, but without a proper
earth ground the metal could all be at an entirely different
potential.

Take for example a spa. Code says all the metal components must be
bonded together. And for good reason. You don't want the possibility
of one piece of metal that you could touch to be at a different
potential than another that you could contact. However, if there is
not a proper earth ground back at the service panel to which the spa
is grounded, then you could step out of the spa and complete a path
between the bonded parts of the spa and the earth, which could be at
different potential.