high voltage readings on catv wiring

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Speedskater

Senior Member
Location
Cleveland, Ohio
Occupation
retired broadcast, audio and industrial R&D engineering
Entertainment devices and computers with Switch Mode Power Supplies (SMPS) sometimes have small capacitors from the strangest places in the power supply back to the AC input line. This leakage voltage through the capacitor can be high frequency AC that modern digital meters are happy to read.
 

hurk27

Senior Member
That is true, most DVM's are wide band, but there accuracy falls off as the deviation from 60hz gets larger.

Why is it I can't click on page 3 but I can see it when I click post?

That was weird, I could click on page 3 but it would just send me back to page 2, until I made this post.:confused:
 
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Speedskater

Senior Member
Location
Cleveland, Ohio
Occupation
retired broadcast, audio and industrial R&D engineering
I had the same problem with my post. Couldn't see it in the thread, but the post count included it. It was also in my "all posts" file. Just noticed another thread, that lists 0 replies but it has 3.
 

tjbaudio

Member
Always check the outlet polarity.

Always check the outlet polarity.

I have seen this problem too many times to count. Every time I have ever been bitten by a voltage on a cable line I traced it back to an outlet wired backwards. The source of the voltage can be a VCR or TV.
 

hurk27

Senior Member
I don't know if this will help but check out this thread and look at #58 on page 6 for what I found to be the problem.

I have found wiring like that more than once, a long time ago, back in "99" or "2000" I posted about a lady who was getting shocked off her refrigerator, in the garage on a concrete floor, I tested the plug like you and had the correct lights on my 3-light tester light up, so I got out the wiggy, and same thing, voltage between hot/neu, and hot /ground, and nothing between neu/ground, also showed continuity between neu/ground.

I said wow how is this possible, I read the ground prong of the fridge to the frame of the fridge, and it showed continuity, so I ran an extension cord from a known good receptacle (one I temped into the panel) to the location, and sure enough it showed the neutral and ground live, and the hot was dead, looked in the receptacles but there was no jumpers, ok got under the house, traced the romex ( was new) to a junction box, where it was fed with an old cloth covered romex, even the conductors inside was cloth covered rubber, and you couldn't tell which was the neutral or hot, it was here they had connected the EGC to the neutral to what they thought was a neutral conductor, it wasn't it was the hot, after explaining it to the home owner we rewired the whole house removing all the ungrounded romex, we found several other places like this, but it was in the house so there was no concrete floor to create a return path, but dangerous just the same.

I have used an extension cord to a good receptacle ever since. one of the best ways to trouble shoot stuff like this.;)
 

sat1man

Member
You may find that the outlet was wired incorrectly and the TV antenna fitting is reading 120VAC to the coax ground. TV cable systems use 60VAC not DC. All drops from the taps are isolated with a capacitor to the center conductor. 60VAC could appear on a commercal drop if hardline is present at the demarc. The cable company had forgotten to remove the fuse on the output of the amplifier.

sat1man
 
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