Fred B
Senior Member
- Location
- Upstate, NY
- Occupation
- Electrician
My thought too. Sounds that something related to the wet nitch not properly bonded.This sounds like elevated neutral to earth voltage on the utility primary, but even if that is the case, there should be no shocks occurring if everything is correctly bonded. With everything correctly bonded, the only voltage to drive a shock would be enough current flowing on the bonding system to create a voltage drop that results in a shock.
When you say lower resistance, in relation to what point? Is all the bonding tied to the GEC system? That could be a source of lower resistance if the nitch is tied both to the EP grid and the GEC while the rest is not. (Parallel paths changing the over all EPB).The short story is, the lighting niche has a lower resistance than the deck/water/handrails. The customer only felt electric shocks when swimming past the light. They did not feel any shock when entering/exiting the pool. I was only able to read 2v to ground, engineer said the day he came they read 7v to ground in the water around the light. This wasn't to the deck, but to plugged into an extension cord leading back to the house. Water to deck its 0v.
If POCO tested to the GEC what they shown was an overall 7V NEV, and the fact you measured only 2V, both possible as at any given moment NEV can change depending on a plethora of conditions. The parallel paths suggestion in combination with a higher NEV would backfeed via connection to the GEC adding the potential difference of 2 to 7V that you measured between the wet nitch and the water/deck bond.