On Apr 2, 9:36*pm, David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 4/2/2010 4:00 PM Nate Nagel spake thus:





On 04/02/2010 07:37 PM, David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 4/2/2010 11:12 AM mike spake thus:

On Apr 2, 11:58 am, Jack Hammer wrote:

Are you absolutely sure it is 59.4V and not 59.4 millivolts?

Agreed. AND I'd double check with an analog meter to rule out
inductive ghost voltages.

It's getting *really* annoying hearing this same answer regurgitated
every time someone reports a problem involving weird voltages in their
home's wiring.

One would think that a DMM (digital multimeter) is a totally unreliable
instrument, prone to erroneous measurements due to cosmic rays and pixie
dust.

This is not the case. I just measured my unit's voltages with my DMM.
Got 122-something volts between hot and ground, and 0.0 between neutral
and ground, just like you're supposeta.

The OP has some screwy wiring, perhaps a floating ground, maybe
something else.

(This isn't to say that it isn't *possible* for a DMM to misread due to
stray capacitance or induced voltages, but it is nowhere near as
terrible a problem as you hear here.)

It's not a problem, it's just the way that it works. *It makes sense
once it's explained.

The OP, I am 99% sure, *has* no ground,

Agreed; the ground pin of his outlet is wired to nothing.

so that's why he isn't reading 0V between neutral and ground. His
situation is more analogous to sticking one probe in the socket and
just holding the other one in the air.

So why didn't that happen to me when I took my measurements? I put one
probe in the socket, in the hot side, and the other in the air, and I
got 0.0 volts.

Look--I understand the concept of phantom readings, and I know they're a
problem under some circumstances. I just don't think they're as
ever-present as some folks claim. I certainly have taken many accurate
measurements using a DMM (and yes, comparing them to an analog VOM and
gotten exactly the same results).

--
You were wrong, and I'm man enough to admit it.

- a Usenet "apology"


That is the difference between using a Digital Multimeter that can be
safely used to determine the presence of line voltage on electrical
wires
namely a "low impedance" multimeter and the incorrect use of a high
impedance multimeter which will incorrectly read "voltage" because of
the capacitance effect being amplified by the length of the wiring in
the
circuit being measured...

Most cheap digital multimeters are intended to be used on small
electronic circuits and circuit boards and not for use on testing long
wiring runs like you would see in houses (feet compared to less than
an inch/es on a circuit board)...

Since you don't do wikipedia (not even to use the referenced source
materials for background verification of the articles) here is a
reference:
http://www.nema.org/stds/eng-bulleti...ulletin-88.pdf

~ Evan