Well pump or city water?
Bad utility neutral in your service drop to the weather head. Go outside and look at the neutral from the weather head to the transformer and look for broken strands. Your neutral will look like a wire rope. Have you been noticing any dimming and brighting with your lights?The issues I described were found at the breaker panel, not on a specific circuit. These are issues with the entire service to the house.
City water. The house however does not have a cold water ground, just an earth ground (old house, old code, current code requires two grounds, cold water supply and earth).
House has no electric water heater.
I like rjniles' idea, just might try that.
And how exactly is that supposed to help me? I don't get ya.Get a different electrical contractor.
I'm troubleshooting an issue at a house and came across the following rather odd circumstances. I pulled in an electrical contractor with 33 years of experience and even he was dumbfounded and had no answers (said he'd consult other electricians). Just seeking ideas from where ever I have access.
-House is a regular ranch home in the US Midwest with a 100AMP service. Off the bat, we measured the power supply as 244V not 240V (I know it fluctuates as you measure it, but in my 10 years of working on houses I've never seen it go outside the 239-241V range).
-The power supply is not balanced for some reason: One leg on this house has 130V and the other 114V. The current on the neutral is much less than the difference between the currents on the two legs. Specific example: leg 1 had 28A and leg 2 had 4A yet the neutral was not 24A (28-4) it was 18A. Then I checked for current on the ground and baam - the ground was carrying about 6A. Yet I can touch the ground and not get shocked! I measure the voltage on the ground and it is 0V. I verified this to be a good earth ground.
-Initial suspicion was that one of the outlets in the house is wired incorrectly with the neutral going to the ground and vice versa but I checked all the ground wires coming to the panel and none were hot.
Anyone ever experienced anything like this? Any ideas? I'm really confused by how the meter was showing 6A on the ground for the service yet no volts?!? How can there be current without voltage? Or is the voltage so low (less than 0.01V) that my meter could not show it?
You need to call a competent electrician to go handle this ASAP. As a landlord, it's your obligation to maintain the property in a safe condition. A loose/open service neutral connection is UNSAFE and you may find yourself with huge expenses for damage to your tenant's property or, worse, injury.This is a house I rented our so I scheduled a time to go back and execute the ideas you've all suggested for this coming Saturday. I will be sue to update you all with my findings.
Even with 240V loads, the neutral current still works out to the difference between the two legs, since the 240V loads impose equal and opposite current on both legs and can be disregarded:The neutral current will not always be the difference of the 2 legs. That would only apply if all loads were 120 Volt. You can have 240 Volt loads that would not have any neutral current.
Oh I see... except no electrical contractor has actually worked on the problem. I've talked to good ones that I've been using for years on the phone. I haven't called anyone out yet. I can do a lot of electrical stuff myself and have learned a lot over the years, I've wired entire houses, done new and existing service upgrades, etc, definitely wouldn't call myself a pro as I am always working on my own properties but I thought I'd check by myself first and get some ideas from you all as well.A competent electrical contractor would have been able to diagnose and troubleshoot this problem. It isn't all that uncommon.
Nah you are wrong, as mpoulton just explained above. Maybe what you were trying to say is that the neutral would read 0 if all I had were 240V loads??The neutral current will not always be the difference of the 2 legs. That would only apply if all loads were 120 Volt. You can have 240 Volt loads that would not have any neutral current.
The imbalance I was referring to was voltage not current! Re-read my post. The voltage coming in from the utility should be balanced (within reason) between the two legs. You are right regarding current, but that is not what I was referring to. Thanks.If you have a split supply,
the for it to be balanced then you would
need to have exactily the same load on each hot line !
Very unlikely.
To confirm, put an clamp on ammeter on each hot supply,
Good chance that the lower one has more load on it !
The current in the earth line could be due to unbalanced load,
or a bad connecttion somewhere.
Try turning off circuits and see what happens to the meter reading.
And measuring from earth to earth will always give no reading.
I see you state you are a lawyer... well, also to follow your signature, let's stick to construction. I have been in the rental business for years, own too many units that I manage myself and others that I manage which do not belong to me and I know that as the landlord I am not responsible for utility supply issues. I have checked everything from the meter to the house and all is good and secure. I went on the roof and even the connections at the weather head look good. Whatever is causing this is probably somewhere on that neutral along the wire. As it is the ground in the service panel is doing its job.You need to call a competent electrician to go handle this ASAP. As a landlord, it's your obligation to maintain the property in a safe condition. A loose/open service neutral connection is UNSAFE and you may find yourself with huge expenses for damage to your tenant's property or, worse, injury.
I checked with the tenants and they have not seen anything strange at all. I checked the wire and I didn't see broken strands - I have to admit, it might have been hard to see them anyway.Bad utility neutral in your service drop to the weather head. Go outside and look at the neutral from the weather head to the transformer and look for broken strands. Your neutral will look like a wire rope. Have you been noticing any dimming and brighting with your lights?
Since I'm not you lawyer, I'm speaking more as a fellow residential landlord and former construction manager. Utility supply issues might not be the landlord's responsibility, but a bad neutral can be either the utility's problem or the customer's. The definitive test is to measure the voltage imbalance at the weatherhead connections, which is usually where the utility's responsibility ends and yours begins. If you measure between the utility's bare neutral and either hot leg at the weatherhead and see a voltage rise when there's a load on the opposite leg, then the problem is definitely at the pole. But if you're seeing balanced voltages at the weatherhead but not in the panel, then there's an issue somewhere in between - like the meter socket.I see you state you are a lawyer... well, also to follow your signature, let's stick to construction. I have been in the rental business for years, own too many units that I manage myself and others that I manage which do not belong to me and I know that as the landlord I am not responsible for utility supply issues. I have checked everything from the meter to the house and all is good and secure. I went on the roof and even the connections at the weather head look good. Whatever is causing this is probably somewhere on that neutral along the wire. As it is the ground in the service panel is doing its job.
I checked with the tenants and they have not seen anything strange at all. I checked the wire and I didn't see broken strands - I have to admit, it might have been hard to see them anyway.
There is a link between the two !The imbalance I was referring to was voltage not current! Re-read my post. The voltage coming in from the utility should be balanced (within reason) between the two legs. You are right regarding current, but that is not what I was referring to. Thanks.