Voltage bleeding through relay?

I

iwirehouses

Senior Member
I just got hired to do the wiring to replace a pump and floats in a septic tank. Wasn’t a bad job honestly. But there’s a controller inside the house where all the floats and pump run to. With an alarm on it. Everything‘s working fine. Except the pump turns on via a relay. With the coil, not energized in the relay, there is always 50 volt to the hot wire going out to the pump. Once the relays energized 120 V goes through the relay to the pump. And it turns on. Everything works fine. But I’m suspicious why there is 50 V bleeding through the relay and going out to the pump without the coil being energizer. The neutral doesn't bleed through the relay at all. Everything technically works fine. Wondering what I’m missing. Or if I should be concerned.
 
The first thing you should check is if the voltage is a solid 50V with a low impedance meter, or if it is a 'phantom' that only shows up if you have a high impedance meter.

Is the relay single pole or double pole (disconnecting only 1 line to the pump or disconnecting both)?

Is the pump a 120V (L-N) or 240V (120V L - 120V L) unit?

-Jonathan
 
The relay is a two pole that disconnects both hot and the neutral. The pump is 120 V. I disconnected the pump wiring off the load side of the relay, and the relay still has 120 line side 50 volt load side. The neutral dosnt pass through it. . I’m not sure about the meter but I used my fluke which never picks up phantom voltage. That’s what made me think it was odd. Its a mechanical relay. I was assuming the relay needs to be replaced. But it’s not causing any issues. So wondering if I’m overlooking something
 
Before I replace the relay, I'd check the resistance from input to output both energized and not.

Disconnect the 120V supply wires and load wires and check the resistance of both poles.
 
Before I did anything, I'd probably get the PN on that relay for a schematic. Not all are built equal.

And when you say "50V", that is in reference to what exactly? The two poles leaving the relay on the load side?
 
It sure sounds like capacitance coupling of voltage onto the conductor, however with a relay that opens both the line and neutral, I would expect to see the same voltage on the neutral to the motor.
You need to verify that your meter has a low impedance function, of use a solenoid type voltage tester. In my opinion this is ghost of phantom voltage from the descriptions.
This is based on the assumption that even with the pump off, there is power on the conductors to the floats and all of the conductors are in the same raceway of cable.
 
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