Is it normal for there to be enough volts in your plumbing to ignite steel wool?

[Bruno]

They didn't have a single lick of electrical safety in my entire EE curriculum...

I had an entire class on industrial safety, but electrical safety was just one chapter.

I'm not an EE, though. I'm a "Technologist". I'm not even eligible to take the PE exam.

Good.  A PE makes you dumb.  I'm not sure how that works.

The landlord's daughter-in-law just came out with an electrician and his son.

His tester stopped working, and he couldn't figure out my multimeter. It was getting milivolt readings from the air, and he couldn't figure out why he was getting a reading when he wasn't touching anything, so he licked his wrists and started touching them to pipes. He told me if there was anything to worry about, he would be able to feel it.

He pulled a screw off a metal plate and cleaned it. He said sometimes they get dirty and don't make good contact, and then you lose your ground.

He seemed satisfied that this solved the problem.

What do you think? Could he have been a PE?

I didn't ask.

[Bruno]

They didn't have a single lick of electrical safety in my entire EE curriculum...

I had an entire class on industrial safety, but electrical safety was just one chapter.

I'm not an EE, though. I'm a "Technologist". I'm not even eligible to take the PE exam.

Good.  A PE makes you dumb.  I'm not sure how that works.

i'm thinking the reason is that engineering disproportionately gets SGitRs.  you give them a paper that tells them they're 'smart', and they get cocky.  you give them a test that says they're really 'smart', and they won't listen to nobody.  even that electrician with 50 fucking years of experience who's telling them they're about to get a nice jolt if they keep doing what they're doing.
and, like they say....
you can always tell an engineer; you just can't tell 'em much.
but also, generalizations are generalizations, generally.

Emo:  what's the deal with technologist degree?  what's the curriculum difference with engineering, and what's the advantage?
also, i'm not a power guy, but the practice of connecting ground to neutral has always seemed convoluted to me.  my uncle's an electrician, and when i asked him, he agreed that a straight answer will always miss stuff, regardless of NEC, and that it really is clear as mud.

LOLIDUNNOLOL!

I was told I would be a step up from a technician, but lower than an actual engineer. As far as I can tell, they took a 2 year technician degree and added a bunch of electives to make it take 4 years.

I think the biggest difference is that there is less math than an engineering degree, and more french literature than a technician degree.

[Bruno]

Also, I did some research and it seems ground connected to neutral at the box is good, anywhere else is bad.

[Elder Iptuous]

yeah, i think NEC says they are required to be at the panel, but i've seen (and my uncle says it's done all over the place) for it to be tied elsewhere.  ground loops are bad i thought, but apparently there are some reasons why they are sometimes desirable.  (not that those reasons account for most of the times it's done) i dunno....

re. your DMM, don't they all do that?  i mean they're going to pick up anything in the air.  if you short the leads it drops to 0000, right?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

They didn't have a single lick of electrical safety in my entire EE curriculum...

I had an entire class on industrial safety, but electrical safety was just one chapter.

I'm not an EE, though. I'm a "Technologist". I'm not even eligible to take the PE exam.

Good.  A PE makes you dumb.  I'm not sure how that works.

The landlord's daughter-in-law just came out with an electrician and his son.

His tester stopped working, and he couldn't figure out my multimeter. It was getting milivolt readings from the air, and he couldn't figure out why he was getting a reading when he wasn't touching anything, so he licked his wrists and started touching them to pipes. He told me if there was anything to worry about, he would be able to feel it.

He pulled a screw off a metal plate and cleaned it. He said sometimes they get dirty and don't make good contact, and then you lose your ground.

He seemed satisfied that this solved the problem.

What do you think? Could he have been a PE?

I didn't ask.

Uh, that doesn't sound very reassuring.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

They didn't have a single lick of electrical safety in my entire EE curriculum...

I had an entire class on industrial safety, but electrical safety was just one chapter.

I'm not an EE, though. I'm a "Technologist". I'm not even eligible to take the PE exam.

Good.  A PE makes you dumb.  I'm not sure how that works.

i'm thinking the reason is that engineering disproportionately gets SGitRs.  you give them a paper that tells them they're 'smart', and they get cocky.  you give them a test that says they're really 'smart', and they won't listen to nobody.  even that electrician with 50 fucking years of experience who's telling them they're about to get a nice jolt if they keep doing what they're doing.
and, like they say....
you can always tell an engineer; you just can't tell 'em much.
but also, generalizations are generalizations, generally.

Emo:  what's the deal with technologist degree?  what's the curriculum difference with engineering, and what's the advantage?
also, i'm not a power guy, but the practice of connecting ground to neutral has always seemed convoluted to me.  my uncle's an electrician, and when i asked him, he agreed that a straight answer will always miss stuff, regardless of NEC, and that it really is clear as mud.

Did I ever tell the story of the electrician who wired my water heater and furnace at my old house? He flipped the breaker, did some work, wrapped up for the day, went home, didn't turn the breaker back on or mention shit to me, so I turned it on SO I COULD USE MY HOUSE AND PREPARE DINNER FOR THE KIDS, and he came back in the next day, started working... and almost fried himself TO DEATH because he didn't turn the breaker off again.  Had the nerve to yell at me, too, for turning it on. I yelled right back at him.

Dumbass. 

[Elder Iptuous]

 
oshi!
it's a good thing he hadn't gone to engineering school, or he would've managed to burn down your house, right?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

oshi!
it's a good thing he hadn't gone to engineering school, or he would've managed to burn down your house, right?

No, but he could very easily have drawn up a fantastic capital expense plan for studying the feasibility of burning the house down.  Then he'd fuck off to a convention in Hamburg and let some day labor arsonists handle it while he figured out how to get 500 Euro prostitutes to fit into his expense form.

[Bruno]

yeah, i think NEC says they are required to be at the panel, but i've seen (and my uncle says it's done all over the place) for it to be tied elsewhere.  ground loops are bad i thought, but apparently there are some reasons why they are sometimes desirable.  (not that those reasons account for most of the times it's done) i dunno....

re. your DMM, don't they all do that?  i mean they're going to pick up anything in the air.  if you short the leads it drops to 0000, right?

Yeah. He probably just wasn't used to my DMM. His probably doesn't do mV, maybe tenths or hundredths. Also, that corner isn't very well lit, and the volt/millivolt indicator is fairly small.

I should have a clamp meter by this weekend. Maybe that will tell me something. Either way, I'm not assuming the problem has been solved, but I do feel absolved of any liability for anything that might happen due to running the dryer now.

And I still have a heightened sense of awareness for any weirdness involving electricity or plumbing in the house.

[Bruno]

They didn't have a single lick of electrical safety in my entire EE curriculum...

I had an entire class on industrial safety, but electrical safety was just one chapter.

I'm not an EE, though. I'm a "Technologist". I'm not even eligible to take the PE exam.

Good.  A PE makes you dumb.  I'm not sure how that works.

The landlord's daughter-in-law just came out with an electrician and his son.

His tester stopped working, and he couldn't figure out my multimeter. It was getting milivolt readings from the air, and he couldn't figure out why he was getting a reading when he wasn't touching anything, so he licked his wrists and started touching them to pipes. He told me if there was anything to worry about, he would be able to feel it.

He pulled a screw off a metal plate and cleaned it. He said sometimes they get dirty and don't make good contact, and then you lose your ground.

He seemed satisfied that this solved the problem.

What do you think? Could he have been a PE?

I didn't ask.

Uh, that doesn't sound very reassuring.

Nah, the shaman came and shook his talismans at the haunted machine and scared away the evil spirits.

I'm sure everything is fine! 

[Bruno]

Well, I got my wish after all.

I finally got my hands on a clamp meter. I clamped it on the pipe, and it's showing 5 amps continuous while the dryer is running, and 25-30 amps during startup, which is the exact same reading I'm getting from the neutral coming out of the back of the dryer.

My diagnosis: some genius decided neutral and ground were basically the same thing when they were wiring the outlet.

[Elder Iptuous]

hmmm

from wiki:

Fixed appliances on three-wire circuits

In North America, the cases of some ranges, cook tops, ovens, clothes dryers and other specifically listed appliances were grounded through their neutral wires as a measure to conserve copper from copper cables during the Second World War. This practice was removed from the NEC in the 1996 edition, but existing installations (called "old work") may still allow the cases of such listed appliances to be connected to the neutral conductor for grounding.

This practice arose from the three wire system used to supply both 120 volt and 240 volt loads. Because these listed appliances often have components that use either 120, or both 120 and 240 volts, there is often some current on the neutral wire. This differs from the protective grounding wire, which only carries current under fault conditions. Using the neutral conductor for grounding the equipment enclosure was considered safe since the devices were permanently wired to the supply and so the neutral was unlikely to be broken without also breaking both supply conductors. Also, the unbalanced current due to lamps and small motors in the appliances was small compared to the rating of the conductors and therefore unlikely to cause a large voltage drop in the neutral conductor.

perhaps relevant?

[Bruno]

Are new 220v appliances all 4 wire?

This dryer only has two hot and a neutral, or at least what I'm assuming is supposed to be neutral and not ground, so the dryer itself is apparently designed to be "grounded" through it's neutral wire.

So far, two local sources, The Shaman, and another friend of mine who apparently has recently gotten his certification as an electrician, have both said things that suggest that they think it's perfectly normal for current to be running through ground. I was taught that if you have current running through ground, something has gone wrong.

When I was poking around inside the dryer, I noticed that everything was running on 120, which explains why I have current running through neutral.

I'm still not sure how neutral is connected to the plumbing, though. Is it a direct connection with a ground wire attached to a pipe somewhere, or is it coming from the heating element? All of the current is coming out of the cold side, there is none on the hot side.