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Three children suffered electric shocks after touching metal railing in pool

6K views 80 replies 16 participants last post by  beenthere 
#1 · (Edited)
Three children, aged 10, six and five, suffered electric shocks in the apartment complex pool in Florida last month.

A video shows their bodies falling limp and slipping beneath the water's surface before they are saved by adults.

All three children spent four days in hospital. Inspectors said that it was due to faulty wiring of the pool pump.

All three victims spent four nights in the hospital but have fully recovered.

Inspectors say that the pool pump had not been properly grounded and malfunctioned - sending electricity into the water rather than away from it.

They said that the electrical work that had been carried out was unpermitted. The pool has now been drained and remains closed.

But CBS4 reported the pool passed a 40 year inspection last year and two health department inspections last year. The inspections require that the pool be up to electrical code.

City records show no official code violations or fines have been issued to the property owners yet.

The incident comes just weeks after seven-year-old Calder Sloan was killed by an electrical shock in his family's swimming pool a few miles away.

He could not be revived after he suffered a shock following a faulty pool light.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ctric-shocks-touching-metal-railing-pool.html
 
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#7 ·
But CBS4 reported the pool passed a 40 year inspection last year and two health department inspections last year. The inspections require that the pool be up to electrical code.
BUT ?

did these inspections include electrical ?
Obviously not !
Or was it just a basic safety type inspection ?
You know, right type of fence, right gate latchs, non slip surfaces.

I know the health department over here dont do electrical inspections !
 
#9 ·
bobelectric said:
Good. If you can't wire a pool. you ain't an electrician.

Seriously? I'm willing to bet if you throw any commercial electrician into article 680, they would fail miserably, it's all what you are used to doing. But it doesn't make you less of an electrician, hardly any electrician would be good out of their normal scope of work. I would fail at doing hospitals and health care facilities, I just don't spend nearly enough time that code section, nor do I have to to do my job.
 
#10 ·
That is probably a great measure of quality..... IMO.

When I have a sub that tells me "Well, I don't know" or "that's not my expertise"..... I feel pretty confident I've got a good man.

Knowing what you don't know... is as important as knowing what you do know....IMO



(Many of the poor quality players will just try to BS you... dead giveaway)
 
#12 ·
Can anyone guess/discuss what might have technically happened here.

Just fun discussion/curiosity

Pump motor shorted to frame/ energising pipe or water/ but what grounded the kids.....? was thhe railing just grounded literally by mechanical connection to earth....

and if so.... why did the kids complete the circuit.... why was not the circuit allready complete.....

:huh:????
 
#13 ·
The railing is grounded. Water itself is NOT a conductor(get a gallon of distilled water and use an ohm meter to prove it). It takes minerals in the water to conduct. When the children grabbed the rail, they made a better conductor to the railing being surrounded/imersed in the water.
 
#14 ·
MTN REMODEL LLC said:
Can anyone guess/discuss what might have technically happened here. Just fun discussion/curiosity Pump motor shorted to frame/ energising pipe or water/ but what grounded the kids.....? was thhe railing just grounded literally by mechanical connection to earth.... and if so.... why did the kids complete the circuit.... why was not the circuit allready complete..... :huh:????

IMO it comes down to a few factors at play, one being a compromised grounding conductor at the pump itself, hence the motor never tripped the over current device, second, being a bonding issue, if everything was bonded correctly, even though the pump malfunctioned, there would have been no voltage potential, meaning the water, e kids, the decking, handrails etc, all would have been at 120v, thus no potential, so no shock hazard, this IS what bonding is all about, to bring everything to the same potential.....
 
#15 ·
beenthere said:
The railing is grounded. Water itself is NOT a conductor(get a gallon of distilled water and use an ohm meter to prove it). It takes minerals in the water to conduct. When the children grabbed the rail, they made a better conductor to the railing being surrounded/imersed in the water.

And had the rails been properly bonded to all the other pool equipment, this would be a non issue.
 
#30 ·
OR.....

Had the rail not been grounded at all....

This is a perfect example of why I say grounding can be a real double edge sword. In certain circumstances grounding can kill. Equapotential bonding is SOOO important around water, but if you happen to miss grounding a single item, or the ground breaks, then congratulations, you've just created a potential 'electric chair'

Electrocution isn't about lack of grounding. It's about setting up a difference in potentials and having a human get between those potentials.... and grounds are perfectly capable of providing a potential difference if you give them the opportunity. Even if the motor was grounded... we use grounds "in case the nuetral breaks".... well, what happens if the ground breaks?

Just my opinion, and I'm stuck with grounds until such time as the code changes, but had that rail not been grounded, and had the code relied on gfci a little more than it does, this wouldn't be an issue.
 
#19 · (Edited)
The kids completed the circuit, the water was energized, the railing or other object they touched was not, that is called voltage potential, when they touched whatever object at 0 volts, they became part of the circuit. Pools are required to have the water bonded now, but in most cases it already was from any light niche, metal ladder, railing, etc....
 
#22 ·
Just my speculation on one or 2.

The house boat was plugged into dock power. The house boat had bad wiring that was grounding to the boat's hull, which in turn electrified the water, passing current through the people in the water, as it tried to find a path to return to source.

The mini golf water feature had something pass current to the water, and the girl made a better path to source due to the water running into the return drain to be pumped back into the feature.

Until the articles telling what the true cause was, only speculation can be done.
 
#24 ·
Kpack said:
Is it hard to ground a pool so it will trip the breaker ? I saw on the news that a light in a pool had rusted over the yrs and the water started shocking people some kids had to be pulled out.
You don't ground a pool, half of them are already in the ground. :) But, we do bond all the metallics together so that no voltage potentials exists, therefore safeguarding people from electric shocks. Equipment grounds protect people from ground faults, this is why when ground pins on cords have the possibility to be compromised, gfci protection is almost always required. Pools have the most redundant bonding/grounding, and for very good reasons.
 
#26 ·
Originally Posted by gregzoll
But CBS4 reported the pool passed a 40 year inspection last year and two health department inspections last year. The inspections require that the pool be up to electrical code.

Which electrical code?
 
#31 ·
Here in New Jersey commercial pools are inspected annually and every five years require a grounding and bonding certification. As a professional electrical contractor and electrical inspector I'm see both sides of this issue. NJ regs spell out what is required for the grounding and bonding cert. One requirement is that no bonded metal shall measure greater than 25 ohms to another bonded part. We run a long price of #6cu from the pool pump motor and measure at every metal part the NEC requires to be bonded. A high quality meter is also required.

Any part not bonded or exceeding 25 ohms has to be corrected. That means cutting concrete and so forth. NJ also requires that commercial pools be updated to current code every year. With a few exceptions.
 
#50 ·
I think you guys (Bob and Stickboy) are saying about the same thing, but working from different sets of assumptions. Stickboy is assuming the pool is isolated from the earth except for the bonded parts. Bob is assuming the reality: the water is already grounded through the pool itself. The NEC water bonding requirement is pretty irrelevant for almost every real-life pool, except maybe some plastic-liner pools. A hot wire dropped into real pool will trip a GFCI regardless of whether the water is "bonded" according to the NEC rule or not.

However, Bob is also assuming that any metal parts which aren't bonded are isolated from ground. In reality, that metal railing (and anything else like it) is pretty darn well grounded even if it's not properly bonded. So regardless of whether it's connected to the bonding grid, it's still going to act as a return path to shock anyone in the electrified water who touches it.

This is why the NEC doesn't just require bonding of pool parts for fault-clearing purposes. Pool bonding is EQUIPOTENTIAL bonding. The equipotential bonding grid is the double-backup fail-safe mechanism. If the GFCI's don't work, and the bonding for fault-clearing doesn't work, the equipotential bonding grid will prevent this type of incident from happening. How? Because the equipotential bonding grid works even if it's not connected to the grounding electrode system or the utility neutral, and the fault doesn't clear. It holds everything a swimmer can possibly touch at the same potential - all metal, the water, the pool surface, and the decking. If the bonding grid had been properly installed in this incident, the faulted pool pump and apparently missing equipment grounding conductor wouldn't have mattered. The water, railing, and deck would all have been equally electrified and the swimmers would have felt nothing. Someone in the equipment room touching the pump, on the other hand, would have discovered the problem the hard way.
 
#51 · (Edited)
A hot wire dropped into real pool will trip a GFCI regardless of whether the water is "bonded" according to the NEC rule or not.

.
I disagree, without the water bonded, it will not trip... the liner will prevent this.

also, we bond because the voltage source isn't always from the same equipment, so GFCI equipment can't be the only guarantee.
 
#58 ·
I get what Bob is saying, but the truth of the matter is that if bonding is done, and correctly, it is much safer than no bonding... the issues would be if say only half the bonding was done, say one hand railing and not the other, if the utility were to lose a neutral you would have one railing energized, and one at zero potential...


IMO, bonding is just safer if done correctly....
 
#60 ·
Am I the only one that thinks it would've been better for everyone to stay in the pool not touching anything until they find out what was going on rather than everyone panicking and rushing out of the pool?

Also a bit disturbed by the one guy grabbing a few kids and leaving one just floating there.
 
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