Customer Shocked in new Shower/Neutral Missing?

[kwired]

Is the floor a grounded surface? By that I mean is it tile on a wood subfloor or tile on concrete on grade?

If it is a grounded floor you very well may just be measuring voltage drop on the service neutral, or even voltage drop on the POCO MGN being extended to you on the service neutral. Your floor is at true ground potential in this case and your electrical system grounded/grounding conductors are at some point above ground.

Seen this same thing happen before in older home with metal sewer piping still run into the ground and it wasn't bonded to the electrical system. Cold water pipe was bonded to electrical system and you would get a shock in the tub because of voltage between water supply piping and waste piping.

Measure voltage between service grounded conductor and a probe out in the yard. If you have more then 5 volts your problem is likely outside the house, even 5 volts is probably a little high but any more then that is a pretty serious stray voltage issue.

 

[mopowr steve]

I am going to keep it brief until I see a few responses. (Obviously requiring me to do more fact checking) I have been brought into a job where the customer is getting an electrical shock when they touch the shower faucet. Previously it was a plastic faucet. If you take electrical meter from cold water to ground no voltage. (Or Hot water, heater is bonded). Go cold water to floor tile on I get 8 volts only when floor is wet. . If I turn the floor tile heater on I Get 64 volts. I have completely ruled out the tile floor heater as it was disconnected during my testing and only made matters worse. I suspect a bad neutral somewhere. The utility came out and said all good on there end. I put my amp meter on grounding electrode to water meter and get 1.2 amps. The Neutral from meter to incoming service is carrying a load also. Not Sure if current is coming in or going out. Have narrowed it down to a possible three circuits in the house. If I turn them off no current on water pipe. Crazy. Any thought??

A very recent trouble call I went to had the same complaint, getting shocked in the shower.

So, on this particular day, As I was awaiting a landlord to arrive at a residence to let me in, I was in my van just looking around and noticed something odd about the way a service drop was attached to a residence across the street. I got out and looked at it realizing the neutral conductor had pulled completely out of the POCOs barrel crimp.
I knocked on the door to let the owners know of this dangerous situation, but no one was home but I did call POCO to repair the problem.

So now, the landlord shows up to the residence that I recieved the call for. And yep I started with my non-contact tester which lit up next to the faucet. Knowing that non-contacts are susceptible to capacitive coupling, I use my wiggy from faucet to drain....it too lit up. OK we really do have something here!
But I was getting strange voltage readings sometimes 30 volts, at times 60 volts, 90 volts with a digital meter as I would turn breakers off and on trying to find a circuit that was responsible.
After a while I took voltage reading from water meter to sewer pipe in the basement which showed same readings.....then it became apparent that the problem may have been contributed to the issue across the street.

And at-last the POCO arrived and repaired the problem across the street and my readings went down to around 1.8- 2.5 volts.

Long story-short......residence across street, lost neutral....current used waterline bond (metallic waterline) which energized domestic waterline in the vicinity.... current travelled through water in my job (plastic water lines) out the faucet and returned via the water running down the drain and back to earth then back to transformer. Just a serious case of stray voltage.

So take a look around, even at neighbors within the vacinity. They may be your culprit.