tingle in water

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need help

tingle in water

Postby need help » Sun 27 Apr, 2008 12:04

:o Please help..felt tingle in water one time. Both husband and I felt, gfi did not trip. Had a short in the pump but it did not trip the gfi either. re-routed on off switchf for pool light to an inside switch. Could this have been our problem. Hasn't happened again, need to do everything to fix.
Anyone else had similar problems? Elec said all is fine.


chem geek
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Postby chem geek » Sun 27 Apr, 2008 13:12

This could be stray voltage which you can read more about here.
need help

Tingle

Postby need help » Sun 27 Apr, 2008 19:28

[quote="chem geek"]This could be stray voltage which you can read more about here.[/quote

Thank you so much. My husband had put some metal rods in the ground to put up fencing to keep our puppies out of certain areas in our yard. This happened that night. I hope that is all. At the present time, I am hesitate to have anyone in my pool. Looking at low voltage lighting right now and it is very expensive.

Thanks. Will you let me know if you think of anything additional? I am going to read the entire article and show my husband. I feel much better. I have had the pool (fiberglass) for about 5 years and nothing had ever happened. To my knowledge everything is grounded.]
chem geek
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Postby chem geek » Tue 29 Apr, 2008 20:01

Unfortunately, I don't have much more to say. The pool may not be properly bonded. As for the rods and fencing that was added, this could have brought a higher voltage region closer to your pool increasing the current you are experiencing. This does sound like a stray voltage problem combined with improper bonding of the pool's deck area (bonding of pool decks is something only required in some areas of the country only relatively recently).
need help

tingling

Postby need help » Wed 30 Apr, 2008 18:46

chem geek wrote:Unfortunately, I don't have much more to say. The pool may not be properly bonded. As for the rods and fencing that was added, this could have brought a higher voltage region closer to your pool increasing the current you are experiencing. This does sound like a stray voltage problem combined with improper bonding of the pool's deck area (bonding of pool decks is something only required in some areas of the country only relatively recently).


I have decided to have all of the wires and connections checked again and have a new gfi put on as well as ground the pool decking in case it did not get grounded when installed.

Thanks for your help
muss08
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Postby muss08 » Wed 30 Apr, 2008 21:26

Bonding is different than grounding. All metal near the pool must be bonded together with copper wire. This includes the steel frame of the pool and deck, any railings, ladders, dive stands, light nitches, slides, pumps, heaters, filters, etc. The stray voltage can be coming from anywhere; even a neighbors if the ground is wet or close by.
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Postby chem geek » Wed 30 Apr, 2008 22:41

Yes, that's an important point to keep in mind -- bonding is not the same as grounding. The bonding is supposed to make it so that any contact you have with the water and any metal in the water, such as railings, and any ground near the water are all at the same potential. They do not have to be the same as "ground" which is arbitrary and in fact will vary depending on where you are if there are stray voltages. With stray voltage, two places in the "ground" will have different relative potential -- they have a potential difference (voltage) between them.

Now technically, the bonding wire may effectively be grounded with some contact with the ground in an area, but that's not relevant to the problem at hand. If your foot in the water and hand on a railing or other foot on the ground were all at the same potential difference, then you wouldn't feel any tingling.

Richard

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