"Doug Miller" wrote in message
...

A$$hole troll "Fred" & wrote in
:

How can I be getting shocked off my faucet? This happens only in my
bathroom & laundry tub downstairs. It's not all the time, but it's a
good
enough zap to make you jump.

You have at least two problems: a fault in your electrical system
somewhere is energizing that pipe, and the pipe itself is not properly
grounded.

Get a qualified electrician out to look at this ASAP: this could be fatal.

You forgot a third fault - the OP is a mental defective who thinks making
people believe that lives are in danger is entertaining. Hmmm, where have
we just seen this same sort of behavior before? In a moderated group he'd
be canned faster than a tuna.

Doesn't matter if one of our own is unbalanced enough to play on people's
good natured concern for their fellow man. To our troll's dismay, in the
end I think a lot of good came out of the discussion. I learned more NEC
stuff and so, I think, did a few others.

The best part is that I ended up getting the Sperry tester recommended by
Nate (Sperry VD6505 for $15 from Amazon and free shipping!) and I love it,
too.

--
Bobby G.

"Doug Miller" wrote in message

stuff snipped

You have at least two problems: a fault in your electrical system
somewhere is energizing that pipe, and the pipe itself is not properly
grounded.
Get a qualified electrician out to look at this ASAP: this could be fatal.

P.S. I forgot to add that in retrospect yours was the first and best
answer. As the thread progressed and we explored all the potential sources
for energized plumbing, it became clear this was a case clearly too complex
for anyone but an expert. The severe downside for guessing wrong (death)
made the best advice would be to get an electrician or even call the power
company.

Another lesson here is that it is probably always wise to assume the poster
knows less than more about 110VAC electricity and work your way up
suggestions when a knowledge level is established through Q & A. We should
have been more suspicious (and Tom R. was) when the answers to the questions
that were asked were not forthcoming very quickly, as they would if someone
were really getting shocked by their faucets.

--
Bobby G.

"Bill" wrote in message
stuff snipped

Ok, this is way weird. I just was going to replace a toilet flapper. I
went to turn the shut off valve, and got zapped, big time!

It's not that weird. As has been pointed out, some malfunctioning
appliance is grounded to your plumbing. As has been suggested, get a
professional to isolate the problem before someone gets hurt!

Congratulations! Yours is the second right answer (get a professional) had
this been an actual situation with human life at risk instead of dumb-ass
troll attack. If we don't know anything about the OP's skill level, with
electrical work it's better to underestimate it.

--
Bobby G.

On Saturday, October 26, 2013 8:20:19 PM UTC-5, Fred wrote:
How can I be getting shocked off my faucet? This happens only
in my bathroom & laundry tub downstairs. It's not all the
time, but it's a good enough zap to make you jump.


Is this after you walk across the carpeting when the humidity is low?

"Nate Nagel" wrote in message

stuff snipped

If you have a voltmeter or test light, measure voltage from a copper
pipe to a good ground (usually the copper pipe *would* be a good ground,
but in this case it is apparently not! Try a grounded receptacle.) I'm
guessing you'll find there is some. Unplug any appliance that connects
to water line one at a time (clothes washer, refrigerator with ice maker
are the two obvious ones; water softener if you have it, etc.) until you
find the faulty one. Leave that one unplugged until it's fixed.

This is what an electrician or an experienced DIY might do, but I am not
sure I would recommend such a procedure to a person whose electrical smarts
are unknown. Even for a moderately experienced person this could prove a
difficult case to diagnose because the rules turn upside down when your
typical ground conductor is somehow energized. Where does the other lead of
your voltmeter go? Is it a reliable test point?

Turns out this troll bait is a great teaching moment for people who want to
learn more. I bought the meter that you recommended. Now the question is
how best to test it on deliberately created "faults" so that I become
familiar with its operation and how to interpret the beeping patterns and
set the sensitivity dial.

I am not sure I want to try energizing the water pipes but it would be nice
to be able to detect even low voltage levels on a water pipe. Not even sure
how I would inject a voltage from a doorbell transformer onto the pipes
without popping a breaker.

If you've unplugged everything and you still have voltage on the pipes,
start turning off breakers one by one until it goes away. Then
depending on your skill level you can find the issue or give a pro a
good place to start troubleshooting (and be safe in the meantime.)

This is actually the way a skilled person would diagnose the problem. In
the programming world the process is called "grunt and crank" as you step
through each possible case. The trick is how to read voltage on the pipes
and that little Sperry tester looks like an ideal tool for that job. Good
find.

Consider driving some ground rods, and bonding your panel and plumbing
system so this doesn't happen again!

Now if you could only figure out a way to make sure we don't get trolled
again. (-: I'd like to drive some rods - vampire movie style.

--
Bobby G.

wrote in message

stuff snipped

FIRST thing to check is the jumper pver the water meter - make sure
the copper piping IS grounded. Once it is grounded there is a pretty
good chance a breaker will "pop", telling you where the problem is.
Just grab a booster cable to do the temporary ground - see if that
fixes it.

The idea of the OP, if he were a newbie, running around clamping energized
pipes with a car booster cable gives me just a little pause, especially if
it's likely to blow a breaker. I know it makes sense to check the meter
because more and more water meters do not provide electrical continuity to
ground, but I like Nate's proposal to deactive device by device and circuit
by circuit until the voltage goes away. But that's advice for a person
who's capable of doing his own electrical work competently enough to pass
inspection. I'd say that's less than half the people I know that do their
own work. (-:

I may be missing something, Clare, but what will you have learned if the
breaker pops that you didn't know before? It reveals that the ground is
energized, but we already know that from the shocks?

And how would repairing ground continuity through the meter, if there was
none, make the voltage in the pipes go away? No properly functioning device
should be dumping enough current into the ground to be detectable at
multiple faucets, AFAIK.

While I think jumpering/checking same is a great idea *after* the fault is
found, I don't think it would aid in diagnosing a problem like this. Worse,
still, the jumper could cause a fairly serious spark. If the troll had done
his own gas piping, and the gas meter was nearby he might be standing in a
cloud of gas when he connects the test bypass cable and then he would
incinerate in a greasy trollish fireball. (-: You wouldn't want that on
your conscience? Now me, I wouldn't mind so much.

--
Bobby G.

On Fri, 1 Nov 2013 21:30:47 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message

stuff snipped

FIRST thing to check is the jumper pver the water meter - make sure
the copper piping IS grounded. Once it is grounded there is a pretty
good chance a breaker will "pop", telling you where the problem is.
Just grab a booster cable to do the temporary ground - see if that
fixes it.

The idea of the OP, if he were a newbie, running around clamping energized
pipes with a car booster cable gives me just a little pause, especially if
it's likely to blow a breaker. I know it makes sense to check the meter
because more and more water meters do not provide electrical continuity to
ground, but I like Nate's proposal to deactive device by device and circuit
by circuit until the voltage goes away. But that's advice for a person
who's capable of doing his own electrical work competently enough to pass
inspection. I'd say that's less than half the people I know that do their
own work. (-:

I may be missing something, Clare, but what will you have learned if the
breaker pops that you didn't know before? It reveals that the ground is
energized, but we already know that from the shocks?

It will tell you which circuit is causing the problem without having
to shut off all the circuits and search for what could be a needle in
a hatstack. It will also eliminate an interupted ground at the meter
as the problem if it does not solve the voltage on the waterline
problem.

And how would repairing ground continuity through the meter, if there was
none, make the voltage in the pipes go away? No properly functioning device
should be dumping enough current into the ground to be detectable at
multiple faucets, AFAIK.

It will pull the water line to ground potential. It only takes
MILLIAMPS of leakage to give a tingle.

While I think jumpering/checking same is a great idea *after* the fault is
found, I don't think it would aid in diagnosing a problem like this. Worse,
still, the jumper could cause a fairly serious spark. If the troll had done
his own gas piping, and the gas meter was nearby he might be standing in a
cloud of gas when he connects the test bypass cable and then he would
incinerate in a greasy trollish fireball. (-: You wouldn't want that on
your conscience? Now me, I wouldn't mind so much.


Now you are REALLY grasping for straws. If there was enough fault
current to cause a serious flash issue, it would have but the OP on
hnis ass, not just a tingle, and there is no reason to suspect a gas
leak - the OP would have smelt that. And see my previous comment
about finding the problem.

Are you an electrician, or have you ever worked under one? I ended
up as a Mechanic after working with my dad as an electrician as a tean
- and electricity in a car behaves very similarly to electricity in a
house - and then I ended up as a computer/electronics technician.

I know electricity - and I have a lot of respect for it. I try real
hard not to give dangerous advice.
That electrical system needed grounding -

"Nate Nagel" wrote in message

stuff snipped

Good point; I didn't think of that as it's been 30 years or more since I
lived in a house with a water meter actually indoors - but if you do
have that kind of setup definitely there should be a jumper across it.

Next thing to check for is a heavy bonding wire between the same area
and the main electrical panel. (was the main feed from the city water
line originally copper or galvanized but recently replaced with PVC?)

Hmmm. I am having a little trouble imagining what happens if there's no
good ground in a house, i.e. the cable going to a ground rod is broken and
the water pipes are not continously connected to the feeder from the street.
Is the piping now energized because it's bonded to the neutral at the panel
but it's not connected to a ground?

What's even more interesting is that my bathroom sink faucet lights up the
Sperry tester on its highest setting but the shower faucets do not. Now
it's time to break out the DVM and see what's going on. (-:

--
Bobby G.

On Fri, 1 Nov 2013 22:56:37 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

"Nate Nagel" wrote in message

stuff snipped

Good point; I didn't think of that as it's been 30 years or more since I
lived in a house with a water meter actually indoors - but if you do
have that kind of setup definitely there should be a jumper across it.

Next thing to check for is a heavy bonding wire between the same area
and the main electrical panel. (was the main feed from the city water
line originally copper or galvanized but recently replaced with PVC?)

Hmmm. I am having a little trouble imagining what happens if there's no
good ground in a house, i.e. the cable going to a ground rod is broken and
the water pipes are not continously connected to the feeder from the street.
Is the piping now energized because it's bonded to the neutral at the panel
but it's not connected to a ground?

If there is no ground return on the house, there is still 240V across
the hot conductors but nothing holding the house "neutral" at ground.
Therefore, neutral will float somewhere in between the two hot
conductors, depending on the relative load on the two conductors (the
loads become a voltage divider between the two hots and neutral).
Since the neutral is connected to the safety ground at the entrance,
safety ground is now allowed to "move", accordingly. You now have a
potentially (boo!) dangerous situation where everything in the house
in energized. If you touch (metal) plumbing, you become part of the
load. Not good.

Many years ago we had a neutral pull off the house. All sorts of
weird things started happening until we figured it out. Basically, we
had 75V on one side of the house and 175 on the other, but that
changed depending on what was turned on. The power company was there
in minutes after the call. They know exactly how dangerous this
situation is.

What's even more interesting is that my bathroom sink faucet lights up the
Sperry tester on its highest setting but the shower faucets do not. Now
it's time to break out the DVM and see what's going on. (-:

A DVM will probably lie to you. Their extremely high impedance will
allow capacitive coupling to show up as a phantom voltage. You need
to load the circuit you're testing to see if it's real. This is why
some people prefer the old analog meters, like Simpson 260s.

On Saturday, November 2, 2013 10:31:45 AM UTC-4, wrote:
On Fri, 1 Nov 2013 22:56:37 -0400, "Robert Green"

wrote:



"Nate Nagel" wrote in message



stuff snipped



Good point; I didn't think of that as it's been 30 years or more since I

lived in a house with a water meter actually indoors - but if you do

have that kind of setup definitely there should be a jumper across it.



Next thing to check for is a heavy bonding wire between the same area

and the main electrical panel. (was the main feed from the city water

line originally copper or galvanized but recently replaced with PVC?)



Hmmm. I am having a little trouble imagining what happens if there's no

good ground in a house, i.e. the cable going to a ground rod is broken and

the water pipes are not continously connected to the feeder from the street.

Is the piping now energized because it's bonded to the neutral at the panel

but it's not connected to a ground?



If there is no ground return on the house, there is still 240V across

the hot conductors but nothing holding the house "neutral" at ground.

Therefore, neutral will float somewhere in between the two hot

conductors, depending on the relative load on the two conductors (the

loads become a voltage divider between the two hots and neutral).

Since the neutral is connected to the safety ground at the entrance,

safety ground is now allowed to "move", accordingly. You now have a

potentially (boo!) dangerous situation where everything in the house

in energized. If you touch (metal) plumbing, you become part of the

load. Not good.



I woudn't say you become part of the load. The load is
still between the two hot legs or between one hot leg
and the neutral. You are not connected there.
I agree that what you will have is the neutral floating
and not being tied to earth ground potential. Hence
as you point out there can be a voltage difference between
the neutral at the house and earth at the house and you
could get a shock, depending on how large that potential
difference is. And it's not just the water pipes that
are affected. For example, an appliance with a metal
case that has a grounded cord, will have it's metal
at a potential that can be different than the wet earth
you're standing on.




Many years ago we had a neutral pull off the house. All sorts of

weird things started happening until we figured it out. Basically, we

had 75V on one side of the house and 175 on the other, but that

changed depending on what was turned on. The power company was there

in minutes after the call. They know exactly how dangerous this

situation is.

Which is very different from what Robert is talking about.
The neutral is the main path for the unbalanced portion of
the current to flow back to the transformer. Without a
neutral, you have all the unbalanced current, which
could be very large, forced into trying to use
the ground path, which has unknown resistance.
With what Robert is describing, that neutral connection
between house and transformer is intact and functioning.

"Davej" wrote in message
...
On Saturday, October 26, 2013 8:20:19 PM UTC-5, Fred wrote:
How can I be getting shocked off my faucet? This happens only
in my bathroom & laundry tub downstairs. It's not all the
time, but it's a good enough zap to make you jump.


Is this after you walk across the carpeting when the humidity is low?

Since you just joined this topic, you may not know that the OP already
admitted (on 10/31/2013) that this was just a fake post and that none of
what he was posting was true.

On 11-02-2013, 19:11, TomR wrote:
"Davej" wrote in message
...
On Saturday, October 26, 2013 8:20:19 PM UTC-5, Fred wrote:
How can I be getting shocked off my faucet? This happens only
in my bathroom & laundry tub downstairs. It's not all the
time, but it's a good enough zap to make you jump.


Is this after you walk across the carpeting when the humidity is low?

Since you just joined this topic, you may not know that the OP already
admitted (on 10/31/2013) that this was just a fake post and that none of
what he was posting was true.

Must have been a post I never saw. It could well be fake,
but "Happy Halloween" is not proof of that.


--
Wes Groleau

What kind of smiley is C:\ ?

Wes Groleau wrote:
On 11-02-2013, 19:11, TomR wrote:
"Davej" wrote in message
...
On Saturday, October 26, 2013 8:20:19 PM UTC-5, Fred wrote:
How can I be getting shocked off my faucet? This happens only
in my bathroom & laundry tub downstairs. It's not all the
time, but it's a good enough zap to make you jump.


Is this after you walk across the carpeting when the humidity is
low?

Since you just joined this topic, you may not know that the OP
already admitted (on 10/31/2013) that this was just a fake post and
that none of what he was posting was true.

Must have been a post I never saw. It could well be fake,
but "Happy Halloween" is not proof of that.

Well, "Happy Halloween" is not proof that the whole hting was a fake. But,
shown below is the context in which it was written, after the whole fire
B.S. and after people (like me) asked what the cause of the alleged fire
was:


"Gordon Shumway" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 31 Oct 2013 08:25:57 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Thursday, October 31, 2013 11:19:26 AM UTC-4, philo wrote:
On 10/30/2013 07:32 PM, Fred wrote:

[Snip}


Anyone else still wondering if this original post is real or
someone is just trolling?

Almost from the beginning... when some tempers started to flare.

Happy Halloween!

On 11-09-2013, 17:23, TomR wrote:
Wes Groleau wrote:
On 11-02-2013, 19:11, TomR wrote:
"Davej" wrote in message
...
On Saturday, October 26, 2013 8:20:19 PM UTC-5, Fred wrote:
How can I be getting shocked off my faucet? This happens only
in my bathroom & laundry tub downstairs. It's not all the
time, but it's a good enough zap to make you jump.


Is this after you walk across the carpeting when the humidity is
low?

Since you just joined this topic, you may not know that the OP
already admitted (on 10/31/2013) that this was just a fake post and
that none of what he was posting was true.

Must have been a post I never saw. It could well be fake,
but "Happy Halloween" is not proof of that.

Well, "Happy Halloween" is not proof that the whole hting was a fake. But,
shown below is the context in which it was written, after the whole fire
B.S. and after people (like me) asked what the cause of the alleged fire
was:

"Gordon Shumway" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 31 Oct 2013 08:25:57 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Thursday, October 31, 2013 11:19:26 AM UTC-4, philo wrote:
On 10/30/2013 07:32 PM, Fred wrote:

[Snip}

Anyone else still wondering if this original post is real or
someone is just trolling?

Almost from the beginning... when some tempers started to flare.

Happy Halloween!

I also fail to see how two people wondering whether it is a troll proves
that it is.

The OP responded to that on Halloween with "Happy Halloween"
Definitely a bit odd, but far from an admission of fakery.

--
Wes Groleau

Armchair Activism: http://www.breakthechain.org/armchair.html

On Sunday, November 10, 2013 12:43:35 AM UTC-5, Wes Groleau wrote:
The OP responded to that on Halloween with "Happy Halloween"

Definitely a bit odd, but far from an admission of fakery.


On the other hand, if we hear from the OP again in early April..................

wrote in message
wrote:
wrote in message

stuff snipped

FIRST thing to check is the jumper over the water meter - make sure
the copper piping IS grounded. Once it is grounded there is a pretty
good chance a breaker will "pop", telling you where the problem is.
Just grab a booster cable to do the temporary ground - see if that
fixes it.

The idea of the OP, if he were a newbie, running around clamping
energized
pipes with a car booster cable gives me just a little pause, especially
if
it's likely to blow a breaker. I know it makes sense to check the meter
because more and more water meters do not provide electrical continuity
to
ground, but I like Nate's proposal to deactivate device by device and
circuit
by circuit until the voltage goes away. But that's advice for a person
who's capable of doing his own electrical work competently enough to pass
inspection. I'd say that's less than half the people I know that do
their
own work. (-:

I may be missing something, Clare, but what will you have learned if the
breaker pops that you didn't know before? It reveals that the ground is
energized, but we already know that from the shocks?

It will tell you which circuit is causing the problem without having
to shut off all the circuits and search for what could be a needle in
a hatstack. It will also eliminate an interupted ground at the meter
as the problem if it does not solve the voltage on the waterline
problem.

OK - that's fair enough. I'll admit I did not consider that when I replied.

I've just been taught not to trip breakers unless it's absolutely necessary
as they have a finite number of fault cycles before they fail. That means I
wouldn't have seized upon that method to diagnose a fault.

My experience is with the "grunt and crank" method of shutting off breakers
one by one (as Nate recommended) and comes from dealing with X10 equipment
issues where tripping a breaker deliberately usually doesn't gain anything.
X10 troubleshooting involves looking for sources of noise or signal
attenuation.

In this case, however, I will gladly concede that it would save time in
hunting down a likely source of the problem. Still, I think it's a very
long shot that the ground shunt on the meter was missing or had failed.
Therefore it would NOT have been the first place I looked, that's for sure.

And how would repairing ground continuity through the meter, if there was
none, make the voltage in the pipes go away? No properly functioning
device
should be dumping enough current into the ground to be detectable at
multiple faucets, AFAIK.

It will pull the water line to ground potential. It only takes
MILLIAMPS of leakage to give a tingle.

But even milliamps of current leakage is impermissible, AFAIK, and that's
why wet areas are now required (when doing new work) to be protected by
GFCIs in most cases. (Hope that's broad enough for the NDBF's.) You can be
electrocuted if you manage to get those milliamps running across your chest.
Even if you repaired an open ground shunt at the meter, wouldn't you agree
that something's still wrong with the wiring?

http://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsarch...s~20020521.htm
says that "Death from an electric shock (ventricular fibrillation*) can
occur when the touch voltage is above 30V RMS resulting in as little as 30
milliamperes of current flowing though the body. This can occur when
improper neutral-to-case connections are made and the neutral is opened."

If I recall correctly from previous discussions a GFCI trips when there is
an imbalance of as little as 5 milliamperes. In any event had this been a
real post and not a troll, we have to consider that the OP was experiencing
not just a tingle, but a serious "zap" at several different points in the
house. That, indicates to me (and to a number of others here) that there's
a serious amount of electrical energy reaching the pipes. A perhaps lethal
amount.

While I think jumpering/checking same is a great idea *after* the fault
is
found, I don't think it would aid in diagnosing a problem like this.
Worse,
still, the jumper could cause a fairly serious spark. If the troll had
done
his own gas piping, and the gas meter was nearby he might be standing in
a
cloud of gas when he connects the test bypass cable and then he would
incinerate in a greasy trollish fireball. (-: You wouldn't want that on
your conscience? Now me, I wouldn't mind so much.

Now you are REALLY grasping for straws.

OMG. That was meant to be a joke, hence the (-: smiley face. But more
importantly, and more realistically, bridging the meter means there's a
chance that he'll touch both ends of the circuit accidentally and if there
is some sort of serious ground fault the current could pass from hand to
hand (and through his chest) - perhaps the most likely way to cause
electrocution.

While bridging the water meter with a car battery booster cable may be
useful advice to someone with excellent electrical skills, I just don't see
it being good advice for a tyro. In these sorts of potentially fatal cases,
it really is important to assume very low knowledge levels on the part of
the OP and high levels of lethality. Water and electricity are a bad
combination.

The other issue I have with that recommendation is that assumes that the
amount of current leaking is negligible. That's not supported by the OP's
original description of not just a tingle but a strong zap that appeared to
be spreading throughout the house.

If there was enough fault
current to cause a serious flash issue, it would have but the OP on
hnis ass, not just a tingle,

Can you say that with certainty? I think in such a situation it depends on
where he's standing when he experiences the tingle/zap, how much current is
flowing and how it is reaching the ground. A tingle at the basement sink
wearing thick rubber boots could easily turn into an electrocution death in
the shower with the metal supply pipes reaching the grounded drain pipes
through the OP's body.

I would be very reluctant to diagnose this as a small current leak just
because at one point in the house he felt only a tingle - especially when he
later reported a strong zap at a different location touching different
items.

and there is no reason to suspect a gas leak - the OP would have smelt
that. And see my
previous comment about finding the problem.

sigh I'll have to remember to use the humor alert tag next time. FWIW,
just for background info, my dad was a materials science engineer for the
nuke sub program and they spent a lot of time developing spark-free
beryllium copper hammers and sparkless flashlights because of the explosion
hazard. So I've grown up thinking that unnecessary spark generation is a
bad idea.

Old habits die hard and I am not inclined to generate sparking when there's
another way to solve the problem. And yes, for my hyped up NDBF detractors
out there (and you know who you are) I *do* assume the OP's not living in a
submarine - although with trolls you never know - but still, throwing
unnecessary sparks doesn't seem like good practice to me. YMMV.

Are you an electrician, or have you ever worked under one? I ended
up as a Mechanic after working with my dad as an electrician as a tean
- and electricity in a car behaves very similarly to electricity in a
house - and then I ended up as a computer/electronics technician.

So you're saying you're not a licensed electrician? (-: We have something
in common, then. Neither am I. But I know enough about electricity to know
that when you're getting ANY kind of shock from your plumbing, whether it's
a tingle or a zap, you have a serious problem that likely requires a
professional to diagnose. Any delay in obtaining one represents a
potentially fatal hazard to the occupants of the house and perhaps even the
neighbors if the problem is "at the pole" and external to the house wiring.

I know electricity - and I have a lot of respect for it. I try real
hard not to give dangerous advice.

Granted. But don't you think that with the level of technical expertise the
OP seemed to have provided (low) that the only real solution was to shut
down the power and get a professional in to diagnose the situation? Or even
the power company? Think of what might happened if, in the described
situation, someone else in the house decided to take a shower while the OP
was diddling around taking meter readings, jumpering water meters, etc. with
the system still live.

The tingling becoming a zapping and then appearing to worsen and spread
throughout the house was, IMHO, clearly a warning that implied great danger.
To that end, a fair number of other respondents recognized that danger
immediately. Once it was clear these were not static shocks, the power
should have been shut off and the power company informed and a professional
summoned. If the OP wanted to poke around the unenergized system with a
flashlight while waiting, that seems pretty unlikely to cause more problems.

From what I've researched about the problem the fault could be external to
the house wiring and affect more than the OP's residence. While he's
fooling around with meters that he may not know how to use properly or
jumpering devices that may have nothing to do with the problem, a neighbor
could be electrocuted because the OP delayed calling the proper authorities.
This is very much *unlike* a clogged dishwasher drain line where there's
little risk in trying to fix the problem other than breaking a pipe nipple
or banging up your hands. A current leak into the plumbing is serious
business.

If you smelled gas in your basement would you go around looking for the
source or call the gas company? Can the average homeowner really compete
with experts who are equipped with sophisticated gas sniffers to detect the
source of even the smallest amount of gas? I know what I would do (and have
done). Call the pros because such cases aren't just home repair issues,
they are potentially life and death ones.

Another point to note is *why* would a water meter ground suddenly fail and
be repairable by jumpering? It just doesn't seem to me to be the first
place to look in a situation like this because it just seems so unlikely
that the meter shunt would suddenly go bad. I would look to recent plumbing
repairs or devices hooked into ground via the water pipes that have failed
and are dumping current into the supply pipes.

That electrical system needed grounding -

Well, I do agree that in such a case it's likely there's a grounding
failure, but that could be in any number of places and from any number of
causes. If the OP wasn't a stinking troll, I would have next asked him what
has changed recently in the house? Was some device added that was grounded
to a water pipe located far from the panel area? Was a new water meter
installed? (It would have to have been by idiots if they failed to shunt the
ground). Was there a plumbing repair made with plastic pipe or fittings?
Did he see linemen working nearby or someone doing excavating?

My suggestion to him involved not touching anything electrical and merely
mapping out any potential points where electricity could be entering the
water supply piping. That was in addition to calling the electric company,
the water company and an electrician because of even the remote possibility
that it's a systemic problem that might be affecting the neighbors.

Mapping out the possible points where electricity is "leaking" might have
helped saved some time for the electrician if it turned out that a failed
device *was* injecting power into the water lines. More importantly, it was
a *completely* passive activity that could be performed by a person of even
low electrical skills. It could be done with the main breaker off and more
importantly without exposing the OP to any kind of shock trying to fix the
problem or diagnose it himself.

So I still strongly stand by that advice rather than recommending the OP
start jumpering water meters, take meter readings without knowing whether
he's working with a good ground, "feel" for tingles or do anything else that
might have had shock risks or complicated or altered the situation for the
professionals who would eventually have to diagnose it.

You must have heard/seen this joke rate card for electricians:

$100 per hour
$125 per hour if you watch

$150 per hour if you tried to fix it yourself

--

Bobby G.

"philo " wrote in message
...

!!!I TOLD YOU TO GET A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN IN ASAP

EVEN 115V CAN BE FATAL!!!!!

Agreed. Even less voltage than that can be fatal!

http://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsarch...s~20020521.htm
that says that "Death from an electric shock (ventricular fibrillation*) can
occur when the touch voltage is above 30V RMS resulting in as little as 30
milliamperes of current flowing though the body. This can occur when
improper neutral-to-case connections are made and the neutral is opened."

--
Bobby G.

On 11/11/13 4:57 PM, Robert Green wrote:

Agreed. Even less voltage than that can be fatal!

http://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsarch...s~20020521.htm
that says that "Death from an electric shock (ventricular fibrillation*) can
occur when the touch voltage is above 30V RMS resulting in as little as 30
milliamperes of current flowing though the body. This can occur when
improper neutral-to-case connections are made and the neutral is opened."

--
Bobby G.


I like that Mike Holt site. I needed information a couple times
for my work. It explained things plainly.

"RBM" wrote in message
...

stuff snipped

If the water feed to the house is non metallic, you need to install or
verify that you have a properly sized bonding conductor going from a 3/4"
cold water pipe to your electric service neutral/ground bar. Also be sure
you have proper grounding electrodes on the service.

Is it likely that's the cause of a problem that seems to have suddenly
occurred? How would your typical poster even know if he had a metallic or
non-metallic supply line? AFAIK, they're often underground and invisible.

This certainly strikes me as something a professional needs to examine
because there are so many different ways the pipes could have become
energized, including some that are external the house wiring.

It's a question of skill sets and experience. Adding new circuits or
replacing a breaker is child's play compared to determining what would
suddenly cause the house faucets to become (perhaps lethally) energized. A
situation like this is not really amenable to a newbie screwing around
looking for possible causes while his wife dies taking a shower. The
numerous technical answers given probably should have been phrased "When the
electrician arrives, some of the things he might look for are . . . "

Unless the OP is *very* skilled electrically speaking, and that's doubtful
from the little information he presented, he needs to consult a
professional because the worst case scenarios could be very bad. Fatally
bad.

As my grandma used to say, you have to determine what things in life are
real tragedies and which are just burned potatoes. This could be a real
tragedy if not handled correctly.

--
Bobby G.

On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 17:47:28 -0500, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message
wrote:
wrote in message

stuff snipped

FIRST thing to check is the jumper over the water meter - make sure
the copper piping IS grounded. Once it is grounded there is a pretty
good chance a breaker will "pop", telling you where the problem is.
Just grab a booster cable to do the temporary ground - see if that
fixes it.

The idea of the OP, if he were a newbie, running around clamping
energized
pipes with a car booster cable gives me just a little pause, especially
if
it's likely to blow a breaker. I know it makes sense to check the meter
because more and more water meters do not provide electrical continuity
to
ground, but I like Nate's proposal to deactivate device by device and
circuit
by circuit until the voltage goes away. But that's advice for a person
who's capable of doing his own electrical work competently enough to pass
inspection. I'd say that's less than half the people I know that do
their
own work. (-:

I may be missing something, Clare, but what will you have learned if the
breaker pops that you didn't know before? It reveals that the ground is
energized, but we already know that from the shocks?

It will tell you which circuit is causing the problem without having
to shut off all the circuits and search for what could be a needle in
a hatstack. It will also eliminate an interupted ground at the meter
as the problem if it does not solve the voltage on the waterline
problem.

OK - that's fair enough. I'll admit I did not consider that when I replied.

I've just been taught not to trip breakers unless it's absolutely necessary
as they have a finite number of fault cycles before they fail. That means I
wouldn't have seized upon that method to diagnose a fault.

The cost of a breaker IF it failed may still be a bargain if it finds
the problem in 2 minutes instead of spending 2 hours - - -

My experience is with the "grunt and crank" method of shutting off breakers
one by one (as Nate recommended) and comes from dealing with X10 equipment
issues where tripping a breaker deliberately usually doesn't gain anything.
X10 troubleshooting involves looking for sources of noise or signal
attenuation.

In this case, however, I will gladly concede that it would save time in
hunting down a likely source of the problem. Still, I think it's a very
long shot that the ground shunt on the meter was missing or had failed.
Therefore it would NOT have been the first place I looked, that's for sure.

I've seen it numerous times.

And how would repairing ground continuity through the meter, if there was
none, make the voltage in the pipes go away? No properly functioning
device
should be dumping enough current into the ground to be detectable at
multiple faucets, AFAIK.

I've had phantom voltage from a cable adaper (cable tv) put enoug
voltage into a TV to give a pretty nasty "tingle" that totally went
away when the TV cable was properly grounded.

It will pull the water line to ground potential. It only takes
MILLIAMPS of leakage to give a tingle.

But even milliamps of current leakage is impermissible, AFAIK, and that's
why wet areas are now required (when doing new work) to be protected by
GFCIs in most cases. (Hope that's broad enough for the NDBF's.) You can be
electrocuted if you manage to get those milliamps running across your chest.
Even if you repaired an open ground shunt at the meter, wouldn't you agree
that something's still wrong with the wiring?

Not necessarily. A bit of leakage is almost considered normal on some
electrical equipment - and it may not even BE real leakage - it could
be inductive or capacitive inductance

http://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsarch...s~20020521.htm
says that "Death from an electric shock (ventricular fibrillation*) can
occur when the touch voltage is above 30V RMS resulting in as little as 30
milliamperes of current flowing though the body. This can occur when
improper neutral-to-case connections are made and the neutral is opened."

If I recall correctly from previous discussions a GFCI trips when there is
an imbalance of as little as 5 milliamperes. In any event had this been a
real post and not a troll, we have to consider that the OP was experiencing
not just a tingle, but a serious "zap" at several different points in the
house. That, indicates to me (and to a number of others here) that there's
a serious amount of electrical energy reaching the pipes. A perhaps lethal
amount.

While I think jumpering/checking same is a great idea *after* the fault
is
found, I don't think it would aid in diagnosing a problem like this.
Worse,
still, the jumper could cause a fairly serious spark. If the troll had
done
his own gas piping, and the gas meter was nearby he might be standing in
a
cloud of gas when he connects the test bypass cable and then he would
incinerate in a greasy trollish fireball. (-: You wouldn't want that on
your conscience? Now me, I wouldn't mind so much.

Now you are REALLY grasping for straws.

OMG. That was meant to be a joke, hence the (-: smiley face. But more
importantly, and more realistically, bridging the meter means there's a
chance that he'll touch both ends of the circuit accidentally and if there
is some sort of serious ground fault the current could pass from hand to
hand (and through his chest) - perhaps the most likely way to cause
electrocution.

While bridging the water meter with a car battery booster cable may be
useful advice to someone with excellent electrical skills, I just don't see
it being good advice for a tyro. In these sorts of potentially fatal cases,
it really is important to assume very low knowledge levels on the part of
the OP and high levels of lethality. Water and electricity are a bad
combination.

The other issue I have with that recommendation is that assumes that the
amount of current leaking is negligible. That's not supported by the OP's
original description of not just a tingle but a strong zap that appeared to
be spreading throughout the house.

If there was enough fault
current to cause a serious flash issue, it would have but the OP on
hnis ass, not just a tingle,

Can you say that with certainty? I think in such a situation it depends on
where he's standing when he experiences the tingle/zap, how much current is
flowing and how it is reaching the ground. A tingle at the basement sink
wearing thick rubber boots could easily turn into an electrocution death in
the shower with the metal supply pipes reaching the grounded drain pipes
through the OP's body.

I would be very reluctant to diagnose this as a small current leak just
because at one point in the house he felt only a tingle - especially when he
later reported a strong zap at a different location touching different
items.

and there is no reason to suspect a gas leak - the OP would have smelt
that. And see my
previous comment about finding the problem.

sigh I'll have to remember to use the humor alert tag next time. FWIW,
just for background info, my dad was a materials science engineer for the
nuke sub program and they spent a lot of time developing spark-free
beryllium copper hammers and sparkless flashlights because of the explosion
hazard. So I've grown up thinking that unnecessary spark generation is a
bad idea.

Old habits die hard and I am not inclined to generate sparking when there's
another way to solve the problem. And yes, for my hyped up NDBF detractors
out there (and you know who you are) I *do* assume the OP's not living in a
submarine - although with trolls you never know - but still, throwing
unnecessary sparks doesn't seem like good practice to me. YMMV.

If you are afraid of the spark or electrocution hazard jumping the
meter, shut off the mains first and jumper it while it is dead.

Are you an electrician, or have you ever worked under one? I ended
up as a Mechanic after working with my dad as an electrician as a tean
- and electricity in a car behaves very similarly to electricity in a
house - and then I ended up as a computer/electronics technician.

So you're saying you're not a licensed electrician? (-: We have something
in common, then. Neither am I. But I know enough about electricity to know
that when you're getting ANY kind of shock from your plumbing, whether it's
a tingle or a zap, you have a serious problem that likely requires a
professional to diagnose. Any delay in obtaining one represents a
potentially fatal hazard to the occupants of the house and perhaps even the
neighbors if the problem is "at the pole" and external to the house wiring.

I know electricity - and I have a lot of respect for it. I try real
hard not to give dangerous advice.

Granted. But don't you think that with the level of technical expertise the
OP seemed to have provided (low) that the only real solution was to shut
down the power and get a professional in to diagnose the situation? Or even
the power company? Think of what might happened if, in the described
situation, someone else in the house decided to take a shower while the OP
was diddling around taking meter readings, jumpering water meters, etc. with
the system still live.

The tingling becoming a zapping and then appearing to worsen and spread
throughout the house was, IMHO, clearly a warning that implied great danger.
To that end, a fair number of other respondents recognized that danger
immediately. Once it was clear these were not static shocks, the power
should have been shut off and the power company informed and a professional
summoned. If the OP wanted to poke around the unenergized system with a
flashlight while waiting, that seems pretty unlikely to cause more problems.

From what I've researched about the problem the fault could be external to
the house wiring and affect more than the OP's residence. While he's
fooling around with meters that he may not know how to use properly or
jumpering devices that may have nothing to do with the problem, a neighbor
could be electrocuted because the OP delayed calling the proper authorities.
This is very much *unlike* a clogged dishwasher drain line where there's
little risk in trying to fix the problem other than breaking a pipe nipple
or banging up your hands. A current leak into the plumbing is serious
business.

Years ago, we had a car club in an old chicken barn, which we had clad
with steel siding. We had poured concrete floor in part of it - with
fence wire for re-enforcement. In the "club room" we had a CB radio
base station sitting on top of an old refrigerator.

Every once in a while one of the guys would report getting a "small
shock" when opening the door. We didn't think much of it, untill one
day I was doing some grinding with a hand grinder on a body repair
when my knee touched a spot where the fence wire just poked through
the rough concrete job - and I got a REAL zap. I thought there was a
problem with the grinder, untill I tested it and everything was OK.
THEN I started looking. Ends up the power transformer on the base
station had smoked, and it was pumping 115 volts out the antenna,
which under certain conditions (like rain or heavy dew) shorted with
fairly high resistance to the metal siding - which connected to the
fencewire in the concrete - and found ground through me to the
grounded grinder.

When I directly grounded the fence wire, it popped the fuse in the
radio, and the voltage went away.


If you smelled gas in your basement would you go around looking for the
source or call the gas company? Can the average homeowner really compete
with experts who are equipped with sophisticated gas sniffers to detect the
source of even the smallest amount of gas? I know what I would do (and have
done). Call the pros because such cases aren't just home repair issues,
they are potentially life and death ones.

Another point to note is *why* would a water meter ground suddenly fail and
be repairable by jumpering? It just doesn't seem to me to be the first
place to look in a situation like this because it just seems so unlikely
that the meter shunt would suddenly go bad. I would look to recent plumbing
repairs or devices hooked into ground via the water pipes that have failed
and are dumping current into the supply pipes.


Have you looked at what often passes as the meter shunt?
A clamp made of iron strapping wrapped around the pipe, with the
copper cable bolted to it. Condensation keeps it damp to wet, and the
strap corrodes off the pipe - you get a ground failure. Not suddenly,
but eventually. One day it gets bad enough that it doesn't ground any
more ---
That electrical system needed grounding -

Well, I do agree that in such a case it's likely there's a grounding
failure, but that could be in any number of places and from any number of
causes. If the OP wasn't a stinking troll, I would have next asked him what
has changed recently in the house? Was some device added that was grounded
to a water pipe located far from the panel area? Was a new water meter
installed? (It would have to have been by idiots if they failed to shunt the
ground). Was there a plumbing repair made with plastic pipe or fittings?
Did he see linemen working nearby or someone doing excavating?

My suggestion to him involved not touching anything electrical and merely
mapping out any potential points where electricity could be entering the
water supply piping. That was in addition to calling the electric company,
the water company and an electrician because of even the remote possibility
that it's a systemic problem that might be affecting the neighbors.

Mapping out the possible points where electricity is "leaking" might have
helped saved some time for the electrician if it turned out that a failed
device *was* injecting power into the water lines. More importantly, it was
a *completely* passive activity that could be performed by a person of even
low electrical skills. It could be done with the main breaker off and more
importantly without exposing the OP to any kind of shock trying to fix the
problem or diagnose it himself.

So I still strongly stand by that advice rather than recommending the OP
start jumpering water meters, take meter readings without knowing whether
he's working with a good ground, "feel" for tingles or do anything else that
might have had shock risks or complicated or altered the situation for the
professionals who would eventually have to diagnose it.

You must have heard/seen this joke rate card for electricians:

$100 per hour
$125 per hour if you watch

$150 per hour if you tried to fix it yourself

"Wes Groleau" wrote in message

On 10-28-2013, 23:01, bud-- wrote:

"No longer code" is "wrong".

Other posts made it clear he meant not required by code.
Don't crucify him for failure to edit extensively.
That would violate Usenet tradition.

Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't expect to find the Spanish
Inquisition nor was I writing for a peer-reviewed scientific journal. I was
specifically thinking of what the Verizon installer did when I got my last
copper POTS line installed on the second floor on the side of the house not
near the service entrance (they really balked at doing that, BTW, saying
they don't like to "box" installations like that - my other phone lines
enter at the same side that the power lines do).

He said he had to run a ground wire from the network interface box all the
way back to the circuit panel and had to test to make sure he was hooking
into a valid ground. Clamping a ground wire to a nearby water pipe was no
longer considered code for new work, at least according to him. I have to
assume he knows what's up to code and what's not when installing a new phone
line since it does it several times a day.

The considerable noise and harping surrounding my comments are just NDBF
because the OP apparently wouldn't know or care about the finer points of
the NEC. It's pretty clear this is a case of someone acting like the Wicked
Witch of the West and thinking "I'll get that Bobby Green and his little dog
Toto if it's the last thing I ever do!" (-: It makes it clear to me who's
interesting in solving the OP's problem and who's interesting in scoring
points in some game of canis mas macho. Yes, it's important to be
absolutely correct but at some point, it's counterproductive to helping the
OP with his problems which in this case was not to be electrocuted.

The most important reason for suggesting that the OP look for grounding
clamps on the pipe was because it was non-destructive, non-lethal, required
no special skills or tools and could be done with the power shut off. If
there was a device that had failed and was energizing the line, being able
to quickly show the electrician the location of possible suspect connections
might have saved some time. Considering some of the other advice given, it
seems especially suspect to become obsessed over what apparently was quite
clear to you.

If the pipes are not providing a continuous ground path, a grounding clamp
on a section of isolated pipe could indeed be the source of the current if
the equipment it's connected to has failed. Of course, since this was
apparently a cowardly troll post to begin with, we'll never know any real
details. Too bad.

--
Bobby G.

"bob haller" wrote in message
...
feel the shock was not good advice.

We all make mistakes. (-:

meter should be used!

Do note if PEX or other non metallic pipes are use the power could
originate from a neighbor.

so the first step is turn off all power and check for voltage ........

That's an interesting idea and a way to determine if there's a fault
external to the home wiring.

The problem is that with digital meters, you can read a phantom voltage and
reach the wrong conclusions.

I think the best advice is still to shut the main breaker and call an
electrician AND the power company.

--
Bobby G.

On 11-11-2013, 20:37, Robert Green wrote:
the equipment it's connected to has failed. Of course, since this was
apparently a cowardly troll post to begin with, we'll never know any real
details. Too bad.

Two guys speculate it might be a troll, and then the OP says "Happy
Halloween" on Halloween Day, and that proves the speculation was correct?

--
Wes Groleau

€œIn the field of language teaching, Method A is the logical
contradiction of Method B: if the assumptions from which
A claims to be derived are correct, then B cannot work,
and vice versa. Yet one colleague is getting excellent
results with A and another is getting comparable results
with B. How is this possible?€�
€” Earl W. Stevick

Wes Groleau wrote:
On 11-11-2013, 20:37, Robert Green wrote:
the equipment it's connected to has failed. Of course, since this was
apparently a cowardly troll post to begin with, we'll never know any real
details. Too bad.

Two guys speculate it might be a troll, and then the OP says "Happy
Halloween" on Halloween Day, and that proves the speculation was correct?


Happy Veterans Day!

On 11-11-2013, 22:31, DerbyDad03 wrote:
Wes Groleau wrote:
On 11-11-2013, 20:37, Robert Green wrote:
the equipment it's connected to has failed. Of course, since this was
apparently a cowardly troll post to begin with, we'll never know any real
details. Too bad.

Two guys speculate it might be a troll, and then the OP says "Happy
Halloween" on Halloween Day, and that proves the speculation was correct?

Happy Veterans Day!

OK, now I know it's a troll! :-)

--
W. Wesley Groleau, Sonar Technician First Class

There ain't no right wing,
there ain't no left wing.
There's only you and me and we just disagree.
(apologies to Jim Krueger)

Wes Groleau wrote:
On 11-11-2013, 22:31, DerbyDad03 wrote:
Wes Groleau wrote:
On 11-11-2013, 20:37, Robert Green wrote:
the equipment it's connected to has failed. Of course, since this was
apparently a cowardly troll post to begin with, we'll never know any real
details. Too bad.

Two guys speculate it might be a troll, and then the OP says "Happy
Halloween" on Halloween Day, and that proves the speculation was correct?

Happy Veterans Day!

OK, now I know it's a troll! :-)

Dave Mason says "Leave it alone."

"Wes Groleau" wrote in message
...
On 10-29-2013, 18:02, wrote:
Good grief. Did you follow the thread? The excerpts

Since you are more interested in argument than communication, I'm going
elsewhere.

--
Wes Groleau

Thanks for reminding me to take the high road. (-: I have been sorely
tempted to reply to Charlie Brown g but you and others have made it clear
I don't need to and shouldn't. It would generate lots of heat but very
little light. This place is already as troll-infested as Somalia it
pirate-infested and for much the same reason.

On the positive side, there's still plenty of valuable discussion left in
this thread. The subject of tingling pipes, even though the original post
was probably a troll, is a good "safety drill" sort of discussion. I've
certainly developed a new perspective - shut off the power, call the
electric company and don't screw around - especially if there are other
people in the house. One of the worst outcomes I can imagine is to think
the problem was inside the house and that you solved it when in fact it was
external and intermittent, making it seem solved, and when it next occurs,
you get zapped.

There's a tendency with the many folks here (raises hand) who like to solve
problems to get lost in the weeds. They focus in on one aspect of the
problem and then think details and forget the big picture. In this case
there's significant lethality at risk with energized pipes. Unless the guy
making the post clearly indicates he's a pretty good DIY electrician (by
what he says and not just what he thinks of himself) I think the only right
answer is "shut her down" and get the pros.

Working through the details of this hypothetical incident makes people
better prepared for real emergencies and that's a good thing. I'll bet
more than one reader learned about how the changing nature of plumbing
materials effects the home's wiring. I still have to figure out when to
trust the new pen meter that Nate turned me onto. It detects voltage from
12VDC UPS batteries on the highest setting. (-:

Finally, there's also a great deal of satisfaction in taking a dumb "cry
wolf" troll post and turning it into a learning discussion. I am sure that
was never "Fred's" intention.

--
Bobby G.

"Wes Groleau" wrote in message

stuff snipped

I'm not the one anxious to "claim" things, but I READ what he said he
meant.

In my universe, we try to understand people before we correct them.

You're a man of integrity in both universes, Mr. Spock - er, I mean Mr.
Groleau. (-:

What I find most interesting is how this tiny side issue is so far removed
from the critical question: What should someone do if they are getting
shocked from plumbing fixtures?

Instead, three words that I added as a parenthetical aside have become a
target for Chet's relentless, withering criticism. Why? Because I didn't
somehow manage to enumerated all the changes, exceptions and nuances to
device grounding in the NEC in those three vague words. It's really just
remarkable.

If that's all he's got, I feel vindicated. Chet readily admits that the OP
didn't have the smarts to even understand the rather simple process of
mapping all wire connections to the water pipes. Yet in the next post he
goes down into the ground *beneath* the weeds talking about exceptions and
grandfathered sections of the code in a desperate attempt to prove me wrong
about *something.* What's that credit card ad say? "It's priceless."

I suppose ignoring the original problem to fight over some minor tangent is
a grand old Usenet tradition as well. )-:

Despite his contumacious tendencies, I would still value Chet's advice on
the first go-round of a "murder board" trying to analyze a problem and
uncover the essential facts. Sadly I would almost always have to exclude
him from the detailed problem solving phase because of his tendency to flog
a dead horse into pony pate. Once he gets a missile lock, true or false,
that's all that he sees from that point forward and the conversation rapidly
devolves to just being argumentative quagmire. It's really a shame to let
one's ire cancel out one's insight. It is comforting, though, to read that
other people understood what I was trying to say. .

--
Bobby G.

"Wes Groleau" wrote in message
...
On 11-11-2013, 20:37, Robert Green wrote:
the equipment it's connected to has failed. Of course, since this was
apparently a cowardly troll post to begin with, we'll never know any
real
details. Too bad.

Two guys speculate it might be a troll, and then the OP says "Happy
Halloween" on Halloween Day, and that proves the speculation was correct?

Sadly there's a lot more information that led TomR to be the first to (quite
correctly, IMHO) speculate that this was a troll.

"Fred" has never posted here in AHR before, has no last name - not even an
initial, provided no email address ("Fred" ), has no record
of posting *anywhere* else on Google that I could find. He never provided
any meaningful follow-up on the resolution of his problem, other than to
vaguely say there was a fire and an investigation but with no real details.
That all adds up to be highly suspicious.

Then there's his cryptic writing simply "Happy Halloween" instead of
providing clear details of the problem's resolution that so many helpful
contributors were waiting to hear. That paints a pretty clear picture of
the typical juvenile troll/sock puppet that enjoys making people worry about
his safety while he's wasting their time. Too cowardly to admit to his
trollery, too? That fits a well-known profile here.

Search with the name of our favorite self-confessed "entertainment troll"
and you'll find the name Fred, too, oddly enough. All these little clues
add up. Most Usenet groups are suffering very serious attrition yet we have
new faces cropping up daily that seem to know way too much about the group
members to really be new to AHR. They tend to appear to make "me too!"
posts of support when someone's losing an argument and then are never or
rarely heard from again. Except for yet another "me too" post.

I was moderating one of the world's largest BBS systems long before the
Internet. "Fred" fits a very common profile of an emotionally retarded
person that enjoys making trouble - the class clown - too stupid to learn
and mean enough to make sure others can't learn, either.

Most importantly, year after year helpful posters like Han just disappear
after being barraged by trolls and sock puppets. The BS that trolling
"don't hurt nobody" is just crap pushed out by trollers trying to justify
their own sad existence. They nym shift *because* they want to screw things
up, bother people, cause arguments and do the things that the sociopathic
enjoy doing.

Despite the BS they sling, the don't just want the freedom to express
themselves. They want to mess things up for others because they feel
society has screwed them over and now they want to screw society back. Most
of them appear to be abject failures in the game of life, always whining
because someone *else* did something to them that caused them to be
wastrels. They rarely, if ever, take responsibility for anything they do.

Couple all that to the absolute onslaught of troll postings from the
baseball bat moron and many others here and there's what I would call a
preponderance of evidence that this was yet another immature moron thinking
it's a fun idea to make people believe someone's in mortal peril. Think of
a normal posting of a problem like this and how much give and take there
*usually* is from the OP that's absent here.

The unmoderated Usenet attracts socially dysfunctional people in the same
way that the weak central government in Somalia attracts pirates, hijackers
and terrorists. Trolling is the low-voltage equivalent of hijacking -
taking something with a defined and useful purpose like a home repair group
and subverting it to satisfy the miscreant's pitiful personal, political or
emotional gain. These trolls have likely been kicked out from other venues
repeatedly and now they're taking their vengeance.

Worse, still, we're infested with nym-shifting trolls who resort to fake
ID's like Fred because they know that most intelligent people who are
actually interested in discussing home repair have twit-listed them. These
poor, socially maladroit infants are *so* starved for attention and
recognition that they will do whatever it takes to get their fix. And
they'll do it over and over again because that coincides with their juvenile
and monomaniacal personality defects. They are unable to distinguish, as
Justice Potter Stewart once said, between what they have a right to do and
what is right to do.

Every one of them knows they couldn't exist for more than a few infantile
posts in a moderated group and so they flock here like pirates to Somalia.
Unmoderated Usenet is the refuge of last resorts for cowards, scoundrels and
people who have nothing particularly meaningful to say, but demand to be
heard anyway. Unmoderated Usenet depends on the honor principle and it's
*very* clear that some people have no honor whatsoever. Just infantile bile
they feel compelled to puke up on anyone within range.

There's an important difference between the normal, acceptable off-topic
chatter that arises in every discussion group and a determined, relentless
effort to pollute the group with off-topic nonsense and flame-bait day after
day. Trolls try to exploit that diiference by claiming they're part of
normal thread drift but even a casual inspection of the day's postings puts
the lie to that contention.

They lie (their normal state of existence, apparently) and say "you can
filter us out" but then turn around and create sock puppets so they can
bypass those filters because their sickness demands that they be at the
center of attention. Always. Can you imagine a life so meaningless that
you have to give it some sort of purpose by being a deliberate a$$hole? My
wife implores me to pity them but I say I don't have much pity for morons
who like to pee in the public pool.

I admire your faith in the goodness of your fellow man, Wes, but in this
instance I think it may be misplaced. If I am ever on trial for a crime, I
want *you* on the jury. (-:

--
Bobby G.

On 11-13-2013, 09:05, Robert Green wrote:
I admire your faith in the goodness of your fellow man, Wes, but in this
instance I think it may be misplaced. If I am ever on trial for a crime, I
want*you* on the jury. (-:

Ha! I have very little faith in the "goodness" (nor the intelligence)
of humanity in general. But I do have a lot more respect than most for
the principle of "beyond all reasonable doubt."

--
Wes Groleau

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable.
€” John F. Kennedy

"Wes Groleau" wrote in message
...
On 11-13-2013, 09:05, Robert Green wrote:
I admire your faith in the goodness of your fellow man, Wes, but in this
instance I think it may be misplaced. If I am ever on trial for a crime,
I
want*you* on the jury. (-:

Ha! I have very little faith in the "goodness" (nor the intelligence) of
humanity in general. But I do have a lot more respect than most for the
principle of "beyond all reasonable doubt."


That's the standard for a criminal conviction -- beyond a reasonable doubt.

The standard in a civil litigation matter is a preponderance of the
evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt.

But, this is neither a criminal case nor a civil litigation matter.

My personal opinion, based on all that the OP posted, is that it appears to
me that the OP made the whole thing up for whatever reasons. Your personal
opinion appears to be that there is no "proof" either way that this was or
was not a made up story posted by the OP.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Yes, it's true that my personal opinion
is that the whole thing was a made-up story posted by the OP. And, yes,
it's true that there is no "proof" (and certainly not "beyond a reasonable
doubt") that that the OP made the whole thing up.

"Wes Groleau" wrote in message
...
On 11-13-2013, 09:05, Robert Green wrote:
I admire your faith in the goodness of your fellow man, Wes, but in this
instance I think it may be misplaced. If I am ever on trial for a
crime, I
want*you* on the jury. (-:

Ha! I have very little faith in the "goodness" (nor the intelligence)
of humanity in general. But I do have a lot more respect than most for
the principle of "beyond all reasonable doubt."

As Tom R noted, this is not a trial, just an analysis. With folks flat-out
admitting to trolling for their own amusement, I have to call them the way I
see them and this sure sounds like a Halloween prank to me. Some other
current threads seem just as prankish. I suppose they're at least on-topic.
(-: I suspect the troller gave us the "all clear, all OK" signal because he
knows that leaving us hanging also left him open to being discovered. All
someone had to do was approach his ISP with a request for more information
so that if he was lying dying in a pool of his own whiz someone could
dispatch the local EMS.

Some good came out of this - I got a nifty new Sperry VD 6505 non-contact
voltage meter (thanks again, Nate for the referral). I can say with
certainty if a newbie's life depends on reading this sucker correctly the
first time out, he's going to die. Depending on where the dial is set you
can get voltage from a stone. After a while I am getting the hang of it but
it's pretty tricky and is wildly effected by RF emanations. Dimmers, TV's,
CFLs and other devices really have an effect on the readings.

Still, glad to have it and after I play with it a while I would actually
trust it to indicate that my water pipes were carrying current.

What I want to do, and what's making my wife nervous, it to cobble together
an isolated pipe setup to test various energization scenarios, particular a
pipe-clamp grounded device gone bad on a segment of copper pipe no longer
well-connected to the ground. Then I could also use a digital voltmeter to
try to figure out what levels of current are leaking, etc.

Might do it with a Variac just to keep the V levels to less than lethal.
That should still give me some idea of what the readings would look like if
I encountered a similar situation in the wild.

--
Bobby G.

"TomR" wrote in message
...
"Wes Groleau" wrote in message
stuff snipped
Ha! I have very little faith in the "goodness" (nor the intelligence)
of
humanity in general. But I do have a lot more respect than most for the
principle of "beyond all reasonable doubt."

That's the standard for a criminal conviction -- beyond a reasonable
doubt.

The standard in a civil litigation matter is a preponderance of the
evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt.

But, this is neither a criminal case nor a civil litigation matter.

Quite true. It's somewhere between a kangaroo court g and that crazy judge
program, "An Eye for and Eye" which you really have to see to believe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_for_an_Eye_(TV_series)

"Judge" Extreme Akim dispensed Biblical justice - if someone had broken into
a car, the victim was given a hammer and allowed to smash up the perp's car
as "payback." Worth watching at least once. My local university shows it
weekly for some odd reason.

My personal opinion, based on all that the OP posted, is that it appears
to
me that the OP made the whole thing up for whatever reasons. Your
personal
opinion appears to be that there is no "proof" either way that this was or
was not a made up story posted by the OP.

The "Happy Halloween" was IMHO a dead giveaway that this was a "Devil's
Night" sort of prank.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Yes, it's true that my personal
opinion
is that the whole thing was a made-up story posted by the OP. And, yes,
it's true that there is no "proof" (and certainly not "beyond a reasonable
doubt") that that the OP made the whole thing up.

Actually, if someone really wanted to make a case, there's always a way to
get to the bottom of a troll post because the newshost keeps IP records.
There are a number of other ways to determine who's running a sock puppet -
they're usually not as smart at covering their tracks as they think they
are. It's not worth the trouble to figure out beyond a shadow of a doubt
what at least a few people strongly suspect. How likely is it that someone
makes their first and last post on Usenet in this one thread? Not very,
IMHO.

--
Bobby G.

On 11-15-2013, 01:56, Robert Green wrote:
voltage meter (thanks again, Nate for the referral). I can say with
certainty if a newbie's life depends on reading this sucker correctly the
first time out, he's going to die. Depending on where the dial is set you
can get voltage from a stone. After a while I am getting the hang of it but
it's pretty tricky and is wildly effected by RF emanations. Dimmers, TV's,

That's what I was referring to in one of my posts when I said a similar
tool is not for the untrained. (Didn't use that word, but I'm too lazy
to go back and find it.)

--
Wes Groleau

Change is inevitable.
Liberals need to learn that €œinevitable" is not a synonym for €œgood."
Conservatives should learn that €œinevitable" is not a synonym for €œbad.€�

On Fri, 15 Nov 2013 12:34:13 -0500, Wes Groleau
wrote:

On 11-15-2013, 01:56, Robert Green wrote:
voltage meter (thanks again, Nate for the referral). I can say with
certainty if a newbie's life depends on reading this sucker correctly the
first time out, he's going to die. Depending on where the dial is set you
can get voltage from a stone. After a while I am getting the hang of it but
it's pretty tricky and is wildly effected by RF emanations. Dimmers, TV's,

That's what I was referring to in one of my posts when I said a similar
tool is not for the untrained. (Didn't use that word, but I'm too lazy
to go back and find it.)
GENERALLY it is more likely to read a voltage that does not exist
than miss one that does if you follow the instructions.

Better safe than sorry.

"Wes Groleau" wrote in message
...
On 11-15-2013, 01:56, Robert Green wrote:
voltage meter (thanks again, Nate for the referral). I can say with
certainty if a newbie's life depends on reading this sucker correctly
the
first time out, he's going to die. Depending on where the dial is set
you
can get voltage from a stone. After a while I am getting the hang of it
but
it's pretty tricky and is wildly effected by RF emanations. Dimmers,
TV's,

That's what I was referring to in one of my posts when I said a similar
tool is not for the untrained. (Didn't use that word, but I'm too lazy
to go back and find it.)

I remember that someone said that but I, too was too lazy to go back to
look. (-: Now we know.

Still, it is the right tool for the job with a dash of OJT. I had an
unadjustable unit before I picked up the Sperry and that one *really*
sucked. This one's a whole lot better although the adjustment dial feels a
little flimsy. Not sure it's going to hold up but I also doubt I will be
using it every day.

-
Bobby G.

wrote in message
...
On Fri, 15 Nov 2013 12:34:13 -0500, Wes Groleau
wrote:

On 11-15-2013, 01:56, Robert Green wrote:
voltage meter (thanks again, Nate for the referral). I can say with
certainty if a newbie's life depends on reading this sucker correctly
the
first time out, he's going to die. Depending on where the dial is set
you
can get voltage from a stone. After a while I am getting the hang of
it but
it's pretty tricky and is wildly effected by RF emanations. Dimmers,
TV's,

That's what I was referring to in one of my posts when I said a similar
tool is not for the untrained. (Didn't use that word, but I'm too lazy
to go back and find it.)

GENERALLY it is more likely to read a voltage that does not exist
than miss one that does if you follow the instructions.

Better safe than sorry.

I took out the Variac to see if I could feed some low-voltage AC into the
bathroom plumbing but a very worried look from SWMBO put the kibosh on that
experiment. Agree that it's more likely to find phantom AC than it is to
miss real current flow.

--
Bobby G.

wrote in message
On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 17:47:28 -0500, "Robert Green"

stuff snipped

OK - that's fair enough. I'll admit I did not consider that when I
replied.

I've just been taught not to trip breakers unless it's absolutely
necessary
as they have a finite number of fault cycles before they fail. That
means I
wouldn't have seized upon that method to diagnose a fault.

The cost of a breaker IF it failed may still be a bargain if it finds
the problem in 2 minutes instead of spending 2 hours - - -

That's probably true, although it's advice for the electrically savvy. The
thing I had a hard time researching was how many fault cycles a breaker is
good for. The answers I saw read from "replace it after four trips" (too
conservative, IMO) to "it's good for 100,000 trips." (I think somewhere in
between those two estimates is correct - but where?)

Clearly the latest breaker designs are far more resilient than breakers of
50 years ago, and I only found one instance of a person claiming a breaker
had failed closed. The nuke sub breakers that my dad worked with that
failed often were circa 1963 and were very special-purpose units. Made to
precise government specs, too, and built by the lowest bidder. (-:

My experience is with the "grunt and crank" method of shutting off
breakers
one by one (as Nate recommended) and comes from dealing with X10
equipment
issues where tripping a breaker deliberately usually doesn't gain
anything.
X10 troubleshooting involves looking for sources of noise or signal
attenuation.

In this case, however, I will gladly concede that it would save time in
hunting down a likely source of the problem. Still, I think it's a very
long shot that the ground shunt on the meter was missing or had failed.
Therefore it would NOT have been the first place I looked, that's for
sure.

I've seen it numerous times.

I defer to your experience but wonder why it's so common? Apparently the
instructions for such devices call out the need for a ground shunt of some
sort and you'd think water company personnel would be trained to deal with
it after the first dozen times someone got shocked to death dark humor
alert.

And how would repairing ground continuity through the meter, if there
was
none, make the voltage in the pipes go away? No properly functioning
device
should be dumping enough current into the ground to be detectable at
multiple faucets, AFAIK.

I've had phantom voltage from a cable adaper (cable tv) put enoug
voltage into a TV to give a pretty nasty "tingle" that totally went
away when the TV cable was properly grounded.

I still contend that there's a problem if grounding alone cures it. There
shouldn't be any current leakage in a properly designed and functioning
system, should there? I, too, have been zapped just touching the CATV line
and something metallic at the same time. Considering the skill of the last
two cable jockeys that Comcrap er Comcast sent out, it wouldn't surprise me
if they did something wrong enough to energize the CATV cable with enough
juice to be dangerous.

It will pull the water line to ground potential. It only takes
MILLIAMPS of leakage to give a tingle.

But even milliamps of current leakage is impermissible, AFAIK, and that's
why wet areas are now required (when doing new work) to be protected by
GFCIs in most cases. (Hope that's broad enough for the NDBF's.) You can
be
electrocuted if you manage to get those milliamps running across your
chest.
Even if you repaired an open ground shunt at the meter, wouldn't you
agree
that something's still wrong with the wiring?

Not necessarily. A bit of leakage is almost considered normal on some
electrical equipment - and it may not even BE real leakage - it could
be inductive or capacitive inductance

What types of equipment would do that?

stuff snipped

Years ago, we had a car club in an old chicken barn, which we had clad
with steel siding. We had poured concrete floor in part of it - with
fence wire for re-enforcement. In the "club room" we had a CB radio
base station sitting on top of an old refrigerator.

Every once in a while one of the guys would report getting a "small
shock" when opening the door. We didn't think much of it, untill one
day I was doing some grinding with a hand grinder on a body repair
when my knee touched a spot where the fence wire just poked through
the rough concrete job - and I got a REAL zap. I thought there was a
problem with the grinder, untill I tested it and everything was OK.
THEN I started looking. Ends up the power transformer on the base
station had smoked, and it was pumping 115 volts out the antenna,
which under certain conditions (like rain or heavy dew) shorted with
fairly high resistance to the metal siding - which connected to the
fencewire in the concrete - and found ground through me to the
grounded grinder.

Ouch. In the X-10 world, people unfamiliar with electricity would often
modify their RR501 transceiver modules to try to improve reception by adding
a longer aerial. Unfortunately the design of the unit used capacitive
coupling to attach the antenna - a small copper pad on the inside of the
case that coupled through the plastic to a small copper pad on the outside
that attached to the antenna. People would simply attach a wire to the
inner pad not realizing that it was live at 110VAC. This was a two-pin
device, too. A surprising number of people zapped themselves trying to
extend the (pitiful, generally) range of those devices with an antenna mod.

I burned up an HP Laserjet's control board using an unpolarized three-wire
adapter. I saw a quite respectable spark when I plugged in the printer
cable between the properly connected PC and the improperly connected
Laserjet. No magic smoke escaped, so it was probably an IC or something
relatively smoke-free. (-: Just a dead Laserjet at a time when they cost
*real* money - $2K+ for the LJII with accessories, IIRC.

When I directly grounded the fence wire, it popped the fuse in the
radio, and the voltage went away.

From what I've been reading, many "tingle" situations are due to internal
defects or failures in items that are connected to ground through means
other than the grounding pin of a grounded receptacle. Strapping pipes with
materials that can corrode from exposure to moisture or cause a galvanic
reaction was an idea whose time has come and mostly gone, and for a number
of disparate reasons.

I think I will take my own advice and review and perhaps rewire any
remaining pipe clamp grounding equipment in the house. They may be
grandfathered into the code, but both my grandfathers are dead and I don't
want to join them. (-:

If you smelled gas in your basement would you go around looking for the
source or call the gas company? Can the average homeowner really compete
with experts who are equipped with sophisticated gas sniffers to detect
the
source of even the smallest amount of gas? I know what I would do (and
have
done). Call the pros because such cases aren't just home repair issues,
they are potentially life and death ones.

Another point to note is *why* would a water meter ground suddenly fail
and
be repairable by jumpering? It just doesn't seem to me to be the first
place to look in a situation like this because it just seems so unlikely
that the meter shunt would suddenly go bad. I would look to recent
plumbing
repairs or devices hooked into ground via the water pipes that have
failed
and are dumping current into the supply pipes.

Have you looked at what often passes as the meter shunt?

I'd have to dig up the front yard. I have *never* seen a water meter inside
any home in the US in my 60 plus years, although I am sure they exist. Is
that a Canadian thing because of the colder temps?

A clamp made of iron strapping wrapped around the pipe, with the
copper cable bolted to it. Condensation keeps it damp to wet, and the
strap corrodes off the pipe - you get a ground failure. Not suddenly,
but eventually. One day it gets bad enough that it doesn't ground any
more ---

I already had a leak coming from galvanic action from a plain old pipe strap
so I don't doubt it's probably a good idea to check stuff like that yearly
or so. Turns out they were copper plated steel straps and mechanical wear
took out the coating and Galvani's discovery did the rest.

My friend added one mo

$100 per hour
$125 per hour if you watch
$150 per hour if you tried to fix it yourself
$200 per hour if you tell us how to fix it (!!!)

Can you imagine a time where there was no electricity anywhere? It's kind
of neat that so many terms we use are actually created from the names of
great inventors:

Scientists whose names are used as SI units

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._as_SI_unit s

Base units
a.. André-Marie Ampère
b.. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
Derived units
a.. Henri Becquerel
b.. Anders Celsius
c.. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
d.. Michael Faraday
e.. Louis Harold Gray
f.. Joseph Henry
g.. Heinrich Hertz
h.. James Prescott Joule
i.. Isaac Newton
j.. Georg Ohm
k.. Blaise Pascal
l.. Werner von Siemens
m.. Rolf Maximilian Sievert
n.. Nikola Tesla
o.. Alessandro Volta
p.. James Watt
q.. Wilhelm Eduard Weber

--
Bobby G. (Gravity - as in "pulling 10G's" - also finance "I owe him 20G's)
humor alert

On Sat, 16 Nov 2013 04:03:02 -0500, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message
On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 17:47:28 -0500, "Robert Green"

stuff snipped

OK - that's fair enough. I'll admit I did not consider that when I
replied.

I've just been taught not to trip breakers unless it's absolutely
necessary
as they have a finite number of fault cycles before they fail. That
means I
wouldn't have seized upon that method to diagnose a fault.

The cost of a breaker IF it failed may still be a bargain if it finds
the problem in 2 minutes instead of spending 2 hours - - -

That's probably true, although it's advice for the electrically savvy. The
thing I had a hard time researching was how many fault cycles a breaker is
good for. The answers I saw read from "replace it after four trips" (too
conservative, IMO) to "it's good for 100,000 trips." (I think somewhere in
between those two estimates is correct - but where?)

Clearly the latest breaker designs are far more resilient than breakers of
50 years ago, and I only found one instance of a person claiming a breaker
had failed closed. The nuke sub breakers that my dad worked with that
failed often were circa 1963 and were very special-purpose units. Made to
precise government specs, too, and built by the lowest bidder. (-:

My experience is with the "grunt and crank" method of shutting off
breakers
one by one (as Nate recommended) and comes from dealing with X10
equipment
issues where tripping a breaker deliberately usually doesn't gain
anything.
X10 troubleshooting involves looking for sources of noise or signal
attenuation.

In this case, however, I will gladly concede that it would save time in
hunting down a likely source of the problem. Still, I think it's a very
long shot that the ground shunt on the meter was missing or had failed.
Therefore it would NOT have been the first place I looked, that's for
sure.

I've seen it numerous times.

I defer to your experience but wonder why it's so common? Apparently the
instructions for such devices call out the need for a ground shunt of some
sort and you'd think water company personnel would be trained to deal with
it after the first dozen times someone got shocked to death dark humor
alert.

And how would repairing ground continuity through the meter, if there
was
none, make the voltage in the pipes go away? No properly functioning
device
should be dumping enough current into the ground to be detectable at
multiple faucets, AFAIK.

I've had phantom voltage from a cable adaper (cable tv) put enoug
voltage into a TV to give a pretty nasty "tingle" that totally went
away when the TV cable was properly grounded.

I still contend that there's a problem if grounding alone cures it. There
shouldn't be any current leakage in a properly designed and functioning
system, should there? I, too, have been zapped just touching the CATV line
and something metallic at the same time. Considering the skill of the last
two cable jockeys that Comcrap er Comcast sent out, it wouldn't surprise me
if they did something wrong enough to energize the CATV cable with enough
juice to be dangerous.

It will pull the water line to ground potential. It only takes
MILLIAMPS of leakage to give a tingle.

But even milliamps of current leakage is impermissible, AFAIK, and that's
why wet areas are now required (when doing new work) to be protected by
GFCIs in most cases. (Hope that's broad enough for the NDBF's.) You can
be
electrocuted if you manage to get those milliamps running across your
chest.
Even if you repaired an open ground shunt at the meter, wouldn't you
agree
that something's still wrong with the wiring?

Not necessarily. A bit of leakage is almost considered normal on some
electrical equipment - and it may not even BE real leakage - it could
be inductive or capacitive inductance

What types of equipment would do that?

A length of cable, diconnected at both ends and the right length,
orriented the right direction, can pick up quite an inductive charge,
and large capacitors must ALWAYS be stored with a chorting strip or
bleed resistor to prevent them prom picking up a charge.

stuff snipped

Years ago, we had a car club in an old chicken barn, which we had clad
with steel siding. We had poured concrete floor in part of it - with
fence wire for re-enforcement. In the "club room" we had a CB radio
base station sitting on top of an old refrigerator.

Every once in a while one of the guys would report getting a "small
shock" when opening the door. We didn't think much of it, untill one
day I was doing some grinding with a hand grinder on a body repair
when my knee touched a spot where the fence wire just poked through
the rough concrete job - and I got a REAL zap. I thought there was a
problem with the grinder, untill I tested it and everything was OK.
THEN I started looking. Ends up the power transformer on the base
station had smoked, and it was pumping 115 volts out the antenna,
which under certain conditions (like rain or heavy dew) shorted with
fairly high resistance to the metal siding - which connected to the
fencewire in the concrete - and found ground through me to the
grounded grinder.

Ouch. In the X-10 world, people unfamiliar with electricity would often
modify their RR501 transceiver modules to try to improve reception by adding
a longer aerial. Unfortunately the design of the unit used capacitive
coupling to attach the antenna - a small copper pad on the inside of the
case that coupled through the plastic to a small copper pad on the outside
that attached to the antenna. People would simply attach a wire to the
inner pad not realizing that it was live at 110VAC. This was a two-pin
device, too. A surprising number of people zapped themselves trying to
extend the (pitiful, generally) range of those devices with an antenna mod.

I burned up an HP Laserjet's control board using an unpolarized three-wire
adapter. I saw a quite respectable spark when I plugged in the printer
cable between the properly connected PC and the improperly connected
Laserjet. No magic smoke escaped, so it was probably an IC or something
relatively smoke-free. (-: Just a dead Laserjet at a time when they cost
*real* money - $2K+ for the LJII with accessories, IIRC.

When I directly grounded the fence wire, it popped the fuse in the
radio, and the voltage went away.

From what I've been reading, many "tingle" situations are due to internal
defects or failures in items that are connected to ground through means
other than the grounding pin of a grounded receptacle. Strapping pipes with
materials that can corrode from exposure to moisture or cause a galvanic
reaction was an idea whose time has come and mostly gone, and for a number
of disparate reasons.

I think I will take my own advice and review and perhaps rewire any
remaining pipe clamp grounding equipment in the house. They may be
grandfathered into the code, but both my grandfathers are dead and I don't
want to join them. (-:

If you smelled gas in your basement would you go around looking for the
source or call the gas company? Can the average homeowner really compete
with experts who are equipped with sophisticated gas sniffers to detect
the
source of even the smallest amount of gas? I know what I would do (and
have
done). Call the pros because such cases aren't just home repair issues,
they are potentially life and death ones.

Another point to note is *why* would a water meter ground suddenly fail
and
be repairable by jumpering? It just doesn't seem to me to be the first
place to look in a situation like this because it just seems so unlikely
that the meter shunt would suddenly go bad. I would look to recent
plumbing
repairs or devices hooked into ground via the water pipes that have
failed
and are dumping current into the supply pipes.

Have you looked at what often passes as the meter shunt?

I'd have to dig up the front yard. I have *never* seen a water meter inside
any home in the US in my 60 plus years, although I am sure they exist. Is
that a Canadian thing because of the colder temps?

Canadian and quite a few northern US locations. The meter is inside
with a remote readout strapped to the outside of the house.

A clamp made of iron strapping wrapped around the pipe, with the
copper cable bolted to it. Condensation keeps it damp to wet, and the
strap corrodes off the pipe - you get a ground failure. Not suddenly,
but eventually. One day it gets bad enough that it doesn't ground any
more ---

I already had a leak coming from galvanic action from a plain old pipe strap
so I don't doubt it's probably a good idea to check stuff like that yearly
or so. Turns out they were copper plated steel straps and mechanical wear
took out the coating and Galvani's discovery did the rest.

My friend added one mo

$100 per hour
$125 per hour if you watch
$150 per hour if you tried to fix it yourself
$200 per hour if you tell us how to fix it (!!!)
And $250 per hour if it comes in a box.

Can you imagine a time where there was no electricity anywhere? It's kind
of neat that so many terms we use are actually created from the names of
great inventors:

Scientists whose names are used as SI units

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._as_SI_unit s

Base units
a.. André-Marie Ampère
b.. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
Derived units
a.. Henri Becquerel
b.. Anders Celsius
c.. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
d.. Michael Faraday
e.. Louis Harold Gray
f.. Joseph Henry
g.. Heinrich Hertz
h.. James Prescott Joule
i.. Isaac Newton
j.. Georg Ohm
k.. Blaise Pascal
l.. Werner von Siemens
m.. Rolf Maximilian Sievert
n.. Nikola Tesla
o.. Alessandro Volta
p.. James Watt
q.. Wilhelm Eduard Weber

"Robert Green" wrote in message
...
Not necessarily. A bit of leakage is almost considered normal on some
electrical equipment - and it may not even BE real leakage - it could
be inductive or capacitive inductance

What types of equipment would do that?

Some equipment will have some low value capacitors going from the AC wiring
to the chassie. This creats a low value of leakage curent. If the
equipment has the proper 3 wire plug , there is no problem. Without the
ground wire, you could feel a tingle if you got between the device and
ground.