Posted on 08/05/2020 2:01:03 PM PDT by rarestia
I’m renovating my patio and wanted to take the ceiling fan off of a switched circuit and run a dedicated feed for power since the fan is always on anyway. I found some drops in the wall near my entertainment center that seemed like a sure thing, so I killed the breaker, cut the line and started running everything to splice in the new fan circuit. While I was stripping wires, my arm touched a ground and I got nice jolt. Yes, my arm touched a ground and got jolted. Grounds are supposed to be dead, right?
Well, despite a few years as an electricians apprentice 20+ years ago, I wasn’t comfortable using this line, so I capped everything and called an electrician to diagnose what I was looking at. Turns out the former owner ran a circuit to a timer for the security flood lamps in the back pasture. Instead of running the neutral, they wired hot to the switch and ground to neutral, so I was getting 110 VAC when putting my Fluke on a ground and neutral. I’d never seen this before. The electrician told me to just go ahead and splice the cut line back together and find another line for the fan run.
When I was putting it all back together, I noticed that while twisting the ground cable I was getting little sparks like you’d see if you touched a 9V battery to a paperclip. My meter shows 0 VAC on the ground, and the whole thing is tidied up in a plastic J box, but I’m sitting here with anxiety welling up in my chest like I should just go rip everything out of the wall and re run the whole thing. It’s technically like it was before I cut it, capped splices notwithstanding. Am I being ridiculous in my trepidation? Any similar stories that could put my mind at ease?
My logical brain knows it’s fine, but my irrational brain is back in high school electric shop watching the teacher set steel wool on fire with a 9V battery.
I like to DYI. But unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure that you know what you are doing, when it comes to electricity, go to a pro.
Don’t try to sell the house until you correct stuff. Use colored electrical to ID green wires that ARE NOT ground, etc.
I wouldnt do any more ‘live’ work without the whole house breaker off.
I deal with dc voltages from solar panels that are hot anytime the sun shines. Thats fun !!
Whatever it takes LOL
The switch and lights in question will not be around much longer. I’m going to have the pros rip them out and run a dedicated circuit for motion floods (mostly because I’m too old to crawl around in my attic).
We just bought this place a few years ago and have no intention of leaving any time soon. It’ll all be fixed to my liking before we retire.
While it sounds like you know what you’re doing, there’s nothing worse than DIY electricians who DON’T know what they are doing.
Mr mm nearly got taken out by backfeed because some idiot before us, ran TWO circuit breakers to the same light. So mr. mm ha closed off the one circuit and started to work and wow howdy, there was a spark, a loud snap, and he got quite a jolt.
What goes on in the minds of most amateur non-electricians who think they can do their own work is beyond me but we and my son have seen some atrocities that somehow miraculously, did not burn the house down.
In my non-professional opinion, it would likely be easier and less time to just rerun everything than to try to figure out what’s going on and hope that you caught it all. That’s what we’ve resorted to after enough wasted time trying to figure out just what the heck is going on.
You homeowner DYIers have been a major source of income for me over the years. 😁
Call a pro when in doubt.
Use 221 whenever possible.
Sometimes I pay for the upgrade to 222. But not with Karen Valentine.
Like I said in my post, I was an electricians apprentice years ago, and I gladly took a step back and called a licensed professional when I ran into something I’d not seen. I used to do commercial new construction and worked with large generators, transfer switches, and general wiring, so this stuff isn’t new to me, but my house is new to me.
The end result here is that everything is put back the way it is with the notable exception of a Romex run that’s no longer end-to-end but spliced. I’m just questioning the little amount of voltage on a ground, which isn’t normal in a properly wired home.
Old foreman I worked with years ago used charge a "DYI Fee" for fixing something a HO screwed up. I paid over $100 to have an electrician come out, look at the work, and tell me to put it back how it was. Already called the pros. I'm just asking about what I'm seeing. I guess posting to FR also incurs a DIY fee? :-)
I just remember it coming on after some show I watched regularly.
You now know:
...some previous homeowner was a DIY electrician.
...they screwed up on the wiring to the timer for the security flood lamps in the back pasture.
-
Now you have to wonder “what else did they screw up on?”...
Actually, the electrician said the way the light timer was wired isn’t wrong, it’s just not used/recommended any more. They wired the ground to neutral, which is fine if you know that downstream neutral is ground. For my purposes, it’s a case of picking the wrong damn cable.
Is your an older house? Sometimes in older houses they would wire all the light to a common ground and then a single hot wire to the switch. So, even though the breaker is ff to the switch you are working on, the ground could be being back fed from another fixture that would still be hot.
Southwire AC Tester Analog 120-Volt Specialty Meter...$6.50 at Lowe's...
It was built in the late 80s. In this case, they didn’t wire the neutral to the switch and ran the neutral off the switch to the ground.
Ya made the right decision! Hire a reputable, experienced pro, pay the
$$$, sleep well at night. Good Luck!
That was done by the inspector before we purchased the house, and yeah, I did it again myself after we moved in. Only one outlet had reversed polarity, and it was a simple matter of swapping the hot and the ground. There’s no voltage from ground to neutral in the breaker box, so this latent voltage is downstream from the switch only.
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