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?
In cases of lightning strikes, you’re on your own. Too many volts/amps all at once will spill out all over the place, jump air gaps between isolated circuits, defying all logic even. A ground at the well head may have helped, but probably not.
Sounds to me like he broke the neutral wire through the switch and not the hot leg.
Call the Homer Simpson service.
“free service here we come”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-W8Ox3YsAE
Sounds like another DIY person made some of his own modifications...I hate the idea of a dedicated, switch-less, line unless it’s also on its own breaker (or on a circuit that can be shut off anytime with no inconveniences)...odds are, it’s gonna need replacement sometime and
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