well pump with no equipment ground

Status
Not open for further replies.
C

chuckwheat

Member
posted August 02, 2004 04:50 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While working at a client's house recently, the fellow's plumber stoppped by to apologize for burning a coaxial cable while sweating a joint. The unexpected visit reminded the client of "little" problem that he had with his 220V well pump. Apparently there was a short to "ground" on one of the hot conductors. I put ground in parentheses because if there were a ground present I would assume that the breaker would have tripped. It did not, and the plumber found out the hard way on a previous service call. His ingenious fix was naturally to cut the grounding conductor at both ends so short as to render it useless.
Now a few questions;
I don't feel I was very clear to this person on the seriousness of the problem, as I was not in the mood to go toe-to-toe with the plumber. Is there any specific scenario I could give to emphasize the danger(s) of an ungrounded well pump?
Is there any safe way of temporarily resolving the grounding issue while excavation arrangements are being made?

Thanks
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Re: well pump with no equipment ground

well,somebody has created a death trap. hay, an ungrounded light fixture -120 volt- not too risky.

now, two hots feeding down a well to a metal motor with many grounded surfaces around--you are asking for trouble.
 
Re: well pump with no equipment ground

I understand that it is a death trap, but that is not the problem. Realistically, this person goes without water until the pump can be rewired, or, waits until I leave to jury rig it once again. I was taught that it is not polite to say "I told you so" after someone has died. What I was looking for was a detailed way I could tell this person that it was indeed a death trap, without it sounding like I was bull****ing the guy into giving me more work.
In fact I am truly concerned for his and his families' life, and am looking for a way to safely have the family with water until a new well feed can be arrranged. As the NFPA does not directly address special situations such as these, I was merely looking for advice. I am resourceful, and will figure something out.I will promptly tell the AHJ to ***** if he has a problem with it, as I can certainly not make the situation MORE dangerous.

I edited out a couple of expletives. Charlie

[ August 02, 2004, 10:00 PM: Message edited by: charlie ]
 
Re: well pump with no equipment ground

Ask him to use a double insulated pump motor if he doesn't wan't to use a grounding conductor. Around here this is all we see. The pump housing is all plastic and there is no exposed metal at all all they run to it is a two conductor twisted feed that is connected to a 12/2 uf cable at the well head the only thing that the grounding conductor connects to is the metal cap on the well head.
 
Re: well pump with no equipment ground

Thank you for the info, and sorry about the explicit language, I was a little excited.
 
Re: well pump with no equipment ground

I don't feel an apology is necessary but it is appreciated. We all understand and have heard it all before. We want to maintain a site that anyone would be proud to let their grandmother or minister sit down and read. :D
 
Re: well pump with no equipment ground

We are limited as to what we can do on service calls,we can not force anyone to repair anything regardless of the danger.The way i was taught is to advise the customer of the violation and or danger.If they do not want or can not afford the repair, on the bottom of bill briefly mention the item and customers choice and have them sign it.This is about as far as you can push it and lets you off the hook if someone gets hurt or killed.No it's not what we should do but we have no right to yank there meter out.If you exsplained the danger about no ground and they refuse to fix then your finished
 
Re: well pump with no equipment ground

about five or six years ago we were doing an infrared scan in a downtown office building. one of the elevator repairmen came by and asked us to come by a building he had just left and scan his elevator distribution panel. i called him when we finished the scan and dropped by his building. we are taught to stay away from contacts 60 degree or greater over ambient because it is about to fail. we showed the problems(three) to the building's chief engineer and left. that night the distribution panel burnt up and they lost all elevators for three days. the building owners talked about placing a lawsuit against us for not being "more forceful" in our explaination of the problem to his chief engineer! and we did this as a favor for the elevator repairmean!!!
 
Re: well pump with no equipment ground

Originally posted by chuckwheat:What I was looking for was a detailed way I could tell this person that it was indeed a death trap, without it sounding like . . . ."
Click to expand...
You could tell the plumber that the situation he created is very much the same as the following: Suppose you were to do some work on the plumber?s car, let us say to install an upgrade to the radio. While working in the dashboard, you accidentally break off a piece of tubing that is there to carry the ?air? to the ?air bag,? in the event of a collision.

Will this cause the car to crash? No. Will this increase that chance that the car might be involved in a collision? No. Will this render the car inoperable? No. But does this create a ?death trap?? Yes it does. Why? Because a feature whose sole purpose in existence is to protect the life of the human(s) in the front seat, in the ?unlikely-but-absolutely-still-possible? event of a collision, has been disabled, and would not be able to perform its one and only one function.

Will the disconnection of an EGC cause a ground fault? No. (Do I have to finish this train of logic, or is my intended meaning clear?)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top