Friday's Failure Forum Picture

[al hildenbrand]

I went back to the house and clamped onto the (underground) incoming CATV cable and sure enough I had over 1 amp of current. . . I can't think of anything else that might cause this problem.

Phil,

The neighbor's corroded water pipe connection and open service neutral.

--And/or--

The power company high side currents (the currents in the primary winding of the local transformer, along with all the other primary windings that are connected to the supplying substation transformer)

As an experiment, turn off all the service disconnects for your customer's dwelling, and take a current reading on the grounded service entrance conductor. Also, check the TV cable drop for current, before and after the dwelling disconnects are shut off.

This should get you on the road to figuring whether the source is inside or outside, or both.

Edit to my misunderstanding that this was a quote:

I've just returned from reading http://forums.mikeholt.com/showthread.php?t=84958Amp clamp on CATV cable started by Goldstar (Phil).

I misunderstood that ghostbuster was "Phil", and I had thought ghostbuster was asking a question.

 

[hbiss]

I'm having a hard time believing that a neutral to ground short on a general purpose branch circuit would cause a problem with the video production system if everything was done properly to begin with. There has to be a lot more wrong here than what you uncovered.

-Hal