Ghost or no Ghost

M

mannyb

Senior Member
Location
Florida
Occupation
Electrician
We are working a service call where the customer/maintenance team at apartment complex recently working on roof. The maintenance people working on roof mentioned that while accessing roof they touched the aLuminum gutter they got shocked. They didn't test with meter but with their voltage tester pen and everyone's pen lights up. I know I know dont trust the pen but even our own pens would light up. We originally found a conduit leaning against the gutter and thought we disccovered the problem but no this was not it. We got on roof but nothing stood out. We tested gutter down spouts with meters but no clear results. We did show some voltage sometimes 6v to 120v but nothing definitive. We turned off the panel we suspected but still got the readings. Apparently this has been an ongoing issue but just now reported. There are 8 other units. We plan on monday to turn off each unit one by one and see if t goes away. We think maybe a screw may have penerated far enough in the wall to have pierced a live circuit. Just wondering if anyone has had similar situations.
 
I had a similar one years ago, bad underground run, was back feeding a rigid conduit that was touching some trim work on the building. It was energizing the trim, gutters and downspouts. Tracked it down with a wiggy connected to a grounded extension chord. Found it was a run to an outbuilding.

Owner was getting shocked in the flowerbed touching any of the metal trim. It was even energizing the foil faced fiberglass insulation in the attic, from trim nails going through the aluminum covered fascia boards. Conduit was not grounded, and a frost heave pushed it upwards causing it to contact the gutter and trim work. Turned into a trenching project, below the frost line this time.
 
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