jmellc
Senior Member
- Location
- Durham, NC
- Occupation
- Facility Maintenance Tech. Licensed Electrician
I've been working nights replacing devices in a house. Mostly routine until I got shocked on a ground wire. Old cable, bevel box with tight clamp. I assumed the clamp dug in and pressed the ground into a hot. Removed the box, got down an extra inch of each cable. Hots had a few small skinned spots. I put heat shrink on them & put in a plastic box. Ground was still live. I found several j boxes in the attic & finally traced it to a roof fan plugged into an attic receptacle. Motor was burned out & had a dead short to ground. I disabled the fan plug and put everything back together.
2 main issues were the dead short and why it did not trip the breaker to start with. The grounds in the 1st switch box were barely made up. I think the culprit was standing alone, though it appeared to be made to the others. Only an inch or so of ground had been left in the box, was hard to see well. They did this in all the other boxes too, cut the grounds much shorter than the other wires. None even reached the edge of the box. I pulled in extra wherever I could. I got the ground continuity back but still need to find where the 1 run didn't make it back to the panel. I will hunt & peck for that as I do the other stuff.
I have seen grounds totally cut out of a cable. I have seen them unmade and tucked down in the box. I have seen them made up with no HR ground. I don't think I have seen them before that were purposely cut so short when other conductors were normal length. I don't know what someone was thinking. Several of them were #16, reduced. No one could say they crowded the box too much.
I hav
2 main issues were the dead short and why it did not trip the breaker to start with. The grounds in the 1st switch box were barely made up. I think the culprit was standing alone, though it appeared to be made to the others. Only an inch or so of ground had been left in the box, was hard to see well. They did this in all the other boxes too, cut the grounds much shorter than the other wires. None even reached the edge of the box. I pulled in extra wherever I could. I got the ground continuity back but still need to find where the 1 run didn't make it back to the panel. I will hunt & peck for that as I do the other stuff.
I have seen grounds totally cut out of a cable. I have seen them unmade and tucked down in the box. I have seen them made up with no HR ground. I don't think I have seen them before that were purposely cut so short when other conductors were normal length. I don't know what someone was thinking. Several of them were #16, reduced. No one could say they crowded the box too much.
I hav
