Loading…
27
Got shocked off a ladder in a crawlspace off Juniper St, panel was bonded to a water pipe
Three weeks ago I was doing a panel swap on a 1978 ranch house over on Juniper St, homeowner wanted the old 4 zone can yanked and an all in one put in. Crawlspace was tight, maybe 18 inches of clearance, and I'm flat on my back drilling for the new can when my forearm brushed a copper water line and I got lit up. Turns out some genius back in the day used the water pipe as the ground and bonded the old panel right to it, so the whole run was hot and the pipe straps were reading 118 volts on my meter. My helper heard me yell and killed the main, and I crawled out with a numb hand and a lot of swearing. Fire inspector over in Salem actually flagged this same setup on a job two months prior, said it's more common in these 70s builds than people think. Now I carry a non contact tester and check every pipe and duct before I lay a finger on anything metal. Anyone else run into water pipe grounding on these older houses, and how do you talk the homeowner into paying for a proper ground rod?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
kevin_harris7825d ago
One thing worth clearing up, bonding the panel to a water pipe wasn't actually the code violation back then, using the pipe as the only ground is where it went wrong. The bond itself is fine and still required today, you just can't count on the water line as your grounding electrode unless it's backed up with a ground rod or two, and that rod has to be within 5 feet of where the pipe enters the house. The real problem on that Juniper house is probably a lost neutral somewhere, because a properly bonded pipe shouldn't read 118 volts even if the rod is missing. A shared neutral on those old 4 wire feeders or a bad service neutral will energize every bonded metal surface in the place, and a pipe is just the easiest thing to touch. So the ground rod sale isn't the whole fix, and if you sell it that way the homeowner's next electrician is gonna tell them the rod didn't solve it. Test the neutral first, then talk rods and a full ground check once you know what's actually feeding that pipe.
8