Electrical short at outside water faucet

[NewHouseOwner]

We own a new house built in summer 2006. Last summer we started noticing a small 'buzzing' electrical short sensation when touching any of the 3 outside water faucets. It is much worse when standing on wet concrete in bare feet and varies from faucet to faucet.

The builder sent an electrician who could not find the problem, so he just attached a stiff ground wire to one of the faucets and the problem is still there.

Some people have told me this can be caused by a short in the water heater element, so should we call a plumber next? We have 2, Bradford White 50 gallon water heaters, model #M250S6DS5.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Redwood]

It could be but the water heater should be grounded and that would make it impossible... Your builder needs to send a better electrician right away! He should not have left without solving the problem! This is a life safety issue! Contact your local building inspector to light a fire under their @$$!

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Patrick88]

I would test that by turning off the water heaters and seeing what happens. Find the breaker(s) and click them off.

You should tell the builder to fix it before somebody gets hurt bad.

 

[NewHouseOwner]

It could be but the water heater should be grounded and that would make it impossible... Your builder needs to send a better electrician right away! He should not have left without solving the problem! This is a life safety issue! Contact your local building inspector to light a fire under their @$$!

Yes, thanks, they should be in their offices tomorrow, perhaps Monday. The ironic thing is we ended up with copper pipe since at the time we were doing the plumbing, in about March 2006, PVC was so expensive post-Katrina. For just $800 more for the whole job we upgraded to copper throughout - so who knows where the short is coming from.

 

[Herk]

I agree that this can be a serious problem. It's not uncommon for a water system to be grounded, but that ground must be jumpered to cross any dielectric unions where it connects to iron pipe that goes through the foundation (assuming it is iron pipe going through the foundation). But there should also be a ground connection from the electrical service sufficient to keep the entire system grounded.

It is possible that the ground rod is not properly connected, or that the ground rod is not making a solid enough connection with the soil. This is something that any qualified electrician should be able to troubleshoot easily.

It's also possible that there's a live wire touching a pipe somewhere.

And this reminds me of a story. My ex called once to tell me that every time someone used her kitchen faucet, they got a shock when touching the water. This sounded a bit fantastic, so I went to check it out.

I used a meter on the faucet and sure enough, there was about 30 volts in the stream of water. I stepped back from the kitchen sink and looked around - there was a lid touching the sink. The lid was to an electric skillet, which the other end of the lid was touching. I unplugged the old electric skillet and tested again and the voltage had disappeared. It was a calrod short in the skillet, transmitted to the sink by the metal lid. Turning on the water gave a grounding path to the juice.

 

[SteveW]

Yes, thanks, they should be in their offices tomorrow, perhaps Monday. The ironic thing is we ended up with copper pipe since at the time we were doing the plumbing, in about March 2006, PVC was so expensive post-Katrina. For just $800 more for the whole job we upgraded to copper throughout - so who knows where the short is coming from.

Don't wait until Monday!

I would hire an electrician myself ASAP if you can't get through to the builder.

Not something you want to sit on for 5 days.

 

[NewHouseOwner]

OK, I had two electricians come out today. They measured 9 volts potential at one faucet, 24V at the other. The third was zero. They checked both water heaters and they are both grounded and operating properly. They inspected under the house and there are no loose wires or obvious places where water pipe is hitting power wires. They then found that the grounding rod was no longer firmly set in the ground, so they drove in about 16 feet of new copper grounding wire at an angle. (We live in a rocky area and if you go straight down you will hit the rock within 3 feet.)

But they were still getting a voltage at the grounding rod, even after turning off all of the house power at the main.(!!!) With the main off, there is only one way power could still be in the system, from the UPSs we have on all the computers. One or more or all of them must be back discharging some power through their ground circuit, which then comes back up through the grounded water system under the right conditions.

Conclusion: We need to pull each UPS box off the power and find out which one(s) are doing this. This is obviously an undesirable shock source but also an energy waster.

Now how wierd it that???

The saga continues....