I can feel your pain, I've been there too with an industrial building, same type of issues. As a industrial electrical contractor, I can tell you it was not an easy thing to diagnose, and find the root cause. But I can offer some lessons, learned.
First off, not to be an alarmist, but I would be concerned about my health, more than the value of my plumbing fixtures and piping or appliances.
I bought a building built in 1955, it contains all copper piping, some underground and some above. All of it had lead solder used in the initial install. All of the drain lines are cast iron, and the gas piping is black iron, including the underground, coated with a protective wrap. The water supply is a large municipal system from the Great Lakes Water Authority.
Before occupying the building I did some renovations to the plumbing system. From the dirt up installed a new handicapped bathroom, installed a large two compartment industrial stainless sink, added provisions for a industrial washer, water lines added for a steam cleaner hose bib and a line for lawn sprinklers. Reworked most of the above ground water piping in the mechanical room, added a back-flow preventer on the main water line. Serviced the water heater with a clean-out, new anode rod and piping with dielectric unions. All of the piping was reworked and installed by a master plumber and inspected.
The electrical service was updated with new panels and an oversize grounding electrode conductor was run from the service to the water service entrance. Two existing ground rods at the service were inspected and reused. Everything was inspected and approved.
For the first several years there were no problems with the system. First sign of trouble was the main water line back-flow preventer started leaking out its drain port. The plumber came back and installed a rebuild kit and re-certified the valve. A year and a half later it started leaking again. This time I inspected the valve parts with him and noticed that there were signs of electrolysis damage on the internal working parts and stainless springs. Another rebuild kit and it was working again. Another year and a half later, it was leaking again. But by this time other things were also leaking. New dielectric unions on the hot water tank, bung fittings on the water tank, T&P valve on the water tank, ceramic disc faucet valves, lavatory faucet valves. Clearly something was wrong, because all the parts were new at the renovation and of top quality and workmanship.
Then I started to feel some personal effects, unmotivated, brain dead feelings, depression, skin lesions that wouldn't heal. I started researching blue water causes and following the Flint MI water saga in the news. One day I came across a site on copper poisoning that listed about a dozen symptoms, I had everyone of them, down to a craving of dark chocolate, not to mention the symptoms above. Even in my brain dead state, I was sure I was on to something. More research on heavy metal poisoning lead me further down that path, I was sure that was my medical problem. I was ingesting metal for several years in my water and coffee consumption.
Contacting the water authority was out for me, the state government and the EPA were in the news lying about the causes of the Flint poisonings, and I felt that they couldn't be trusted with my health. The reports from the water authority stated everything was good in my area, and I had no similar problems at my home, which is in the same area and municipal water system. More study on the medical aspect and symptoms and causes of electrolysis.
I selected a private water testing lab and sent some samples. Contacted a doctor from a family referral that specialized in metal poisoning. Got a urine test and a blood test. When the results came back, it confirmed my research, I was poisoned with metal from the building water system. Studying about the detoxing methods, costs, time frames, and outcomes, made me even more depressed. I realized that there was no quick fix, and detoxing was going to make me sicker. The detox methods pull the metals out of your organs and tissues, and put it into your blood stream, so that your body can filter and discharge it through your kidneys and liver. I can attest to you it is not a pleasant experience. I had lead, copper, cadmium and chromium. Calcium is the natural detoxing agent, foods with calcium would put me in a coma like state for days when I first started, then the terrible skin lesions would show up and stay for weeks. I opted to not go for the medical treatment method, where they hook you up to a intravenous solution for the same affect for hours at a time. I was too sick for that, a half gallon of milk or a dish of cottage cheese could put me down for days.
When my brain started partially working again, it was time to start researching and testing for the source of the problem. It was DC current as others had mentioned before, but where was it coming from? How am I going to detect and measure it? What can I do to mitigate it?
To be continued, in order to keep the post length reasonable.
