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Underground wire

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hnieves85

Member
Location
US
I sent 277v to a lighting circuit and left the numeral and ecg disconnected and the lights work. 12v from the pole to earth and can't find the splice point how is it working???

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hnieves85

Member
Location
US
It's a parking lot and I'm trying to find the splice point for the underground pvc pipes

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hnieves85

Member
Location
US
I used a meger and the insulation is bad 5 conductor in pipe and I only connected 1 and the rest are safed off

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hnieves85

Member
Location
US
No 480 the ballast is wired for 277 and I was doing bucket lighting maintenance

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ActionDave

ActionDave

Chief Moderator
Staff member
Location
Durango, CO, 10 h 20 min from the winged horses.
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Licensed Electrician
hnieves85 said:
No 480 the ballast is wired for 277 and I was doing bucket lighting maintenance

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Fun stuff. Bet no one has an as built. My last parking troubleshoot wound up in a buried ground box that no one knew about. The only thing I know to do is start isolating connections till you find the bad junction or wire.
 
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hnieves85

Member
Location
US
I'm going to use a wire tracer but wanted to see if anyone could explain how the light is working with no return to the panel

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kwired

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
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EC
hnieves85 said:
I sent 277v to a lighting circuit and left the numeral and ecg disconnected and the lights work. 12v from the pole to earth and can't find the splice point how is it working???

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Click to expand...
Where did you disconnect neutral and EGC? At the fixture base of the pole, at the panel?

Do you have multiwire circuit involved here? You could have other lights in series but both across 480 volts if you do have a opened neutral and MWBC.
 
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hnieves85

Member
Location
US
If there was 480 and the ballast wired for 277 then the ballast would go they are 400 watt metal halide

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ActionDave

ActionDave

Chief Moderator
Staff member
Location
Durango, CO, 10 h 20 min from the winged horses.
Occupation
Licensed Electrician
hnieves85 said:
I'm going to use a wire tracer but wanted to see if anyone could explain how the light is working with no return to the panel

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Click to expand...

Bootleg neutral or some other alternative path would be what I would look for.

With a MWBC if you loose the neutral the lights could, possibly work through both legs of the 480V. Its possible that the lights don't blow up because even though it's a 480V circuit all the lights would be in series between your two hots. Not an possibility I would consider in this situation.
 
C

Cow

Senior Member
Location
Eastern Oregon
Occupation
Electrician
Time to get out the locator/fault finder. I also wouldn't be energizing just a "hot" with no other wires connected.
 
M

mpoulton

Senior Member
Location
Phoenix, AZ, USA
hnieves85 said:
12v from the pole to earth
Click to expand...

If that's a 400W ballast, the current would be about 1.5A. The 12V you are seeing suggests that the pole base has about 8 ohms of resistance as a grounding electrode that that's the return path for the current, due to a neutral-ground fault (or intentional connection) at the pole. Not a safe situation.
 
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