Not 'opener'.. the door
A friend of mine had mentioned his garage door 'bit' him.. he thought is was a sharp corner of the metal skin on the door.. but couldn't find a sharp point...
A while later he noticed 'sizzling' on the ground after a rain... and called me over to 'cure the problem' as he figured somehow the door was energized and was about to have a baby walking around the house..
I was pretty sure there was some sort of reversal of hot n ground, but when i plugged in my tester into the garage opener outlet it lit up orange orange no red.. ????
Out comes the fluke.. measured V from ground to 'hot' and it reads 120... ground to neutral = zip... neutral to hot = 120.. .nothing too strange here...
so... have my friend hold the meter and one lead in the ground of a different outlet (their temporary solution was to use an outlet that didn't cause the problem)... measured from that 'ground' to 'hot' on the problem outlet... read nothing... but... ground on reference outlet to either neutral or ground read 120.
outlet was wired fine... but I think he mentioned that one outlet in his house wasn't working... turned out that somehow 'hot' was wired to both sides of that outlet, which caused a nonfunctioning outlet, but energized the downline neutral... the hot n neutral of the downline was swapped so there was a to and from path so things 'ran'... I can't remember how the ground n neutral were tied that the ckt wasn't tripped but that ground was energized, but i remember it was just a matter of bad wiring in the junction/outlet and everything was grounded and working when I was done.
in after sight.... maybe somebody 'cheated' the ground someplace? and it was just neutral and ground connected at the first outlet..
In any event, made the garage door 'electric' and was in this dangerous 'mode' for over a year before i fixed it.
-awr
A friend of mine had mentioned his garage door 'bit' him.. he thought is was a sharp corner of the metal skin on the door.. but couldn't find a sharp point...
A while later he noticed 'sizzling' on the ground after a rain... and called me over to 'cure the problem' as he figured somehow the door was energized and was about to have a baby walking around the house..
I was pretty sure there was some sort of reversal of hot n ground, but when i plugged in my tester into the garage opener outlet it lit up orange orange no red.. ????
Out comes the fluke.. measured V from ground to 'hot' and it reads 120... ground to neutral = zip... neutral to hot = 120.. .nothing too strange here...
so... have my friend hold the meter and one lead in the ground of a different outlet (their temporary solution was to use an outlet that didn't cause the problem)... measured from that 'ground' to 'hot' on the problem outlet... read nothing... but... ground on reference outlet to either neutral or ground read 120.
outlet was wired fine... but I think he mentioned that one outlet in his house wasn't working... turned out that somehow 'hot' was wired to both sides of that outlet, which caused a nonfunctioning outlet, but energized the downline neutral... the hot n neutral of the downline was swapped so there was a to and from path so things 'ran'... I can't remember how the ground n neutral were tied that the ckt wasn't tripped but that ground was energized, but i remember it was just a matter of bad wiring in the junction/outlet and everything was grounded and working when I was done.
in after sight.... maybe somebody 'cheated' the ground someplace? and it was just neutral and ground connected at the first outlet..
In any event, made the garage door 'electric' and was in this dangerous 'mode' for over a year before i fixed it.
-awr