Voltage on shower head in bathroom

[packersbay]

So I have a customer who called and said she was getting a shock when she touch shower head. She mentioned she just installed solar panels on home. Any suggestions on finding issue why there is voltage on shower head.

 

[Dsg319]

Is the whole house plumbed with copper?

Shut breaker off one at a time and watch for absence of voltage?

Measure voltage to see if it is 120vac fault with no bonding of water lines back to the panel to clear fault?

 

[packersbay]

Ok thanks for advice

 

[HEYDOG]

Could be an open neutral.

 

[winnie]

Shutting off breakers is a great way to discover if there is a fault inside the house causing the problem.

However the problem can be outside of the house.

Voltage between showerhead and drain suggests that the two are not bonded together. If the drain piping is metallic then you can have voltage between plumbing and drain caused by current flowing through the soil.

Jon

 

[packersbay]

All are good points and I will take into consideration. However customer never had this problem until they installed solar panels.

 

[GoldDigger]

1. Possibly solar installer added a redundant/undesireable earth electrode as part of solar installation which could be messing up GES if there are heavy earth currents for some reason.
2. Racking on roof may be making a metallic connection to an otherwise-unbonded run of drain pipe via vent stack.
3. Installer connected their EGC to a new clamp on an unbonded section of water pipe that includes shower.

All speculation.
Is problem same with and without grid-interactive inverter running?

 

[ptonsparky]

OP...keep us informed what you find. Solar adds a whole new aspect for those of us that have never seen, let alone worked with it.

 

[packersbay]

So the issue was a pair of wires that went underground to a storage room that got terminated to new service. At some point customer had a sub panel in storage room. Conduit and wire was cut somewhere underground. So voltage was going thru wires.

 

[ptonsparky]

So the issue was a pair of wires that went underground to a storage room that got terminated to new service. At some point customer had a sub panel in storage room. Conduit and wire was cut somewhere underground. So voltage was going thru wires.

Nothing to do with the Solar add or were those installers responsible for damage?