No rain in sight! All summer one of the gates out at the farm has been giving me a little shock. Last week I measured 900 volts on the gate. This week I was digging up daffodil bulbs from just below that gate and the soil gave a tingle. Just plain old damp dirt measured 300 volts! These 2 wires carry the current underground below the gate to connect to the fence on the other side. I heard it snapping on rainy days and found this. So today I replaced that broken wire. It seemed to do the trick, but I'm not convinced. Just clamping the voltmeter onto the outside of the new insulated wire registered 300v. How can that be? Then mowed the lawn. Hummingbirds were going nuts today. I thought they would crash into something.
Closet drywall install is almost done. (The difference in color is caused by leaving a piece out on the front porch in the sun.) Still need to cut out an access to the attic around that little black hole in the picture below, and add a few more screws here and there. You should feel the hot air blowing through that hole in the daytime! Ran into a problem right at the very end (long story) I didn't think of. Will sleep on it. Got another job I should do tomorrow.
Today did not turn out well. The job I had planned required the golf cart. Engine would turn over but cart wouldn't move. Haven't used it in a long time, so I let it sit a while and this time it moved. Backed it out of the garage, not a simple feat due to junk piled near the door. It was soon clear this thing would not go very far, so quickly scrambled back to the garage. Noticed a puddle on the floor. Smelled like gasoline. Oil level was fine. An hour later it had evaporated. I've been watching Youtube videos and have a feeling this is an easy fix. Something about the fuel line. I wish I knew more about it. The problem is most folks refuse to work on it unless they haul it in their shop. I really didn't want to fool with this right now, it means you have to be there two days, and whoever repairs it may not show up when they say they will. With that project shot, I decided to tackle the garage door opener. Door goes up fine, but won't come down, starts, then stops and reverses, but eventually it will inch down, so I just disconnected it and have been using it manually for a couple of months. Now nothing happens. I've also been troubleshooting that. Found out something about a reset. That might get me back to square one, and then I suspect it is also something simple, like the alignment of the sensors. By then, time was running out to do a new job, so I saw a can of green paint and sprayed another coat on my cement frog. It is still pitting and has a broken foot. So I decided to not try to do anything more today. It seems to be an unlucky day. One more day of thinking about the closet, and I may come up with a better solution. I'm trying hard to refrain from going into details about it.
Oh my gosh, we had a garage door do the exact same thing this week. Realized one of the senors at the bottom on the frame had gotten out of line with the other sensor. I just did a little manual adjusting and some sweeping away of spider webs and it is working fine. Had the house pressured washed yesterday and the roof cleaned and gutters cleaned. Looks like a "new shiny penny" now! Putting a "check" off the list of things to do!
@Pam Sellers I've been reading about pressure washing. It is perfectly safe with asbestos siding at low intensity, but I can see it as an excuse a company with a good reputation will use not to take a job. Some people are truly paranoid about it. I have a pressure washer, but not sure it will go up 30 feet, and that would be quite an adventure anyway. Last time I used it, it quit working. Seems like everything I own needs fixing. Painting the sides of the house is not a big priority right now. Just the back. I can do that. Did you decide anything about your fence gate?
My heavens, @Nancy Hart! You were leaking current into the ground for how long?? I cannot explain why you would be getting voltage on the OUTSIDE of an insulated wire unless there was a conductor (a liquid with a salt dissolved in it) on the outside that connected with the hot wire. Maybe @Frank Sanoica can explain it.
Maybe I had the probe end of the volt meter stuck in the wrong place. I'll try it again tomorrow to make sure. ETA: The fence charger puts out 9600 volts, so 300 is small by comparison, if that makes any difference. . .
but there is still leakage from somewhere. The potential (voltage) from the charger just makes the leakage visible.
@Nancy Hart "So today I replaced that broken wire. It seemed to do the trick, but I'm not convinced. Just clamping the voltmeter onto the outside of the new insulated wire registered 300v. How can that be?" I am assuming this is an electrified fence, commonly called "electric fence", intended to dissuade animals? There must be a charging unit somewhere, getting it's energy from the local power line. As I understand these devices, which I really do not, they place an electric charge between the fence wires, which are insulated from the ground, and the ground itself. They may be using a high-frequency alternating current, which could account for your "seeing" voltage present on the outside insulation of the wires. Where, exactly, are you touching the two lead wires of the meter shown? One stuck in the ground, the other touching the insulated wire feeding the fence? A true 300 volt presence at power line frequency could easily prove lethal, under many conditions, but most certainly would not cause a "tingle". What I suspect is happening is that a static charge exists about the wire and that is causing an indication on your meter, but, that indication is surely erroneous. The device feeding all this may itself have a ground fault, and be conducting current to ground at it's own location. I would need to know more particulars here. Frank
Yes I assume when you say "tingle" you meant MORE than just a tingle? Fence chargers nowadays produce current in very short split-second bursts, each burst about one second apart. Ninety-six hundred volts continuously would kill you, I think. You can barely feel 300v. If I have time I'll walk the (inner) fence line tomorrow and check for other shorts. Thanks for all the information.
Dang Frank, are you an electrical engineer? You have a lot of knowledge! Well, I am impressed! Nancy, got to buy a new single gate because the gate it's self is bent. The post it attaches to seems to be fine. Should be an easy fix. Well, there I go jinxing myself....there is never an easy fix! LOL
@Nancy Hart "I assume when you say "tingle" you meant MORE than just a tingle? Fence chargers nowadays produce current in very short split-second bursts, each burst about one second apart. Ninety-six hundred volts continuously would kill you, I think. You can barely feel 300v. " Slight misunderstanding, I think. You mentioned feeling a tingle, I repeated that. Here's the scoop on voltage sources, voltage numbers, and safety. Any source of voltage, let's use a car battery as the example, has a quality known as "regulation". That means the more highly regulated a voltage source is, the more current it is capable of delivering, measured in Amperes, or amps. The car battery is highly regulated, so much so, it can deliver hundreds of amps, but only with a 12-volt "punch". The fence voltage source, you say at 9600 volts, has very poor regulation, which means as soon as it begins deliveriong some amperage, it's voltage drops drastically. With a short circuit across it's terminals, like a hunk of wire, it's voltage will be very nearly zero, just a tiny bit of voltage left to cause an extremely small current to flow, in the thousandths of an ampere range; we call those "milliamperes", or milliamps. So, the 9600 volt source, while it can yield a nasty jolt to a person's body, painful, it cannot maintain voltage at a high enough level to be lethal. Because as soon as it begins delivering a few milliamps through the unfortunate contacting it, it's voltage instantly drops to a very low value, assuring against electrocution. Such voltage sources are designed to operate thusly, very poorly regulated on purpose. Regarding "safe" current levels through the human body: (remember, by "current" we mean amps. or milliamps., that calls out the intensity of the electric current flow; voltage is the electrical pressure which causes current to flow. Zero voltage = zero current flow.) The special circuit interrupting outlets and breakers in our feeder panels, known as "GFI" breakers, detect current flow to ground, which is a distinctly undesirable condition. A GFI outlet must open the circuit if the current to ground reaches 5 milliamps: 0.005 Ampere, and do it within one cycle of the alternating current, 1/60 second. IOW, 5 milliamps flowing through a human body will do no permanent harm to a healthy individual. CAN feel nasty though. I know it's difficult to understand all of this for one without a background knowledge of electrical principles. Please, ask if more clarification or explanation is wanted! Frank