A shocking shower experience at the cottage:
Last year or perhaps the year before, while I was in the shower at the cottage, I received a shock from the faucet. I told this to my wife who said “No, I never got a shock from the shower, it must have been something else.”
Fast forward to today… My wife came out of the shower and said “I got shocked when I touched the shower faucet!” Hmmmm, now that is an interesting turn of events. I suspected the electric hot water heater is not grounded or the insulation has worn off of one of the wires inside it and is touching the metal case. This in turn, is transmitted up the copper hot water pipe to all of the faucets in the house. It just so happens that the shower is the only place where the circuit can be completed, but only if you are standing on the metal shower drain.
I could not test this theory with my voltmeter because I left my tools at home. If I did have my voltmeter, I think I would find 110 volts AC on the metal ring around the outside of the shower faucet to ground. I believe the shower drain to have some resistance in it, as the pipe is plastic, so between the faucet and drain would likely be less than 110 VAC. The shower is the only place where you can come in contact with a ground reference, since the bathroom sink and the kitchen sink are all surrounded by wood, so any user would be insulated from ground as long as the wood was dry.
The ground wire on the water heater? Connected. I removed the access covers on the hot water heater and checked all of the AC lines. They all look good. I noticed the AC mains coming into the tank made a sharp turn and both the hot wires were pushed up against the tank. I pulled these back a little. The only other possibility is the main panel grounding electrode has become disconnected or otherwise inoperative. This would mean that the entire cottage was ungrounded and electricity is seeking ground where ever it can find it. The ground wire comes out of the panel near the meter and disappears under the side of the cottage. I cannot see the ground rod itself, so there is no way to check that. It may be worth it to have the electrician put a new ground rod in as a safety measure.
This is obviously a dangerous situation and I can see how it could happen in other places.
Update 1: The electrician looked at the hot water heater and did not find any fault. He also looked at the cottage electrical panel ground electrode and found it to be good. The one thing that he did was add a ground wire between the electrical panel and the copper water pipe, which he thinks will take care of the problem.
Update 2:October 8, 2006. My brother in law called from the Cottage last night and stated the circuit breaker for the Hot Water heater kept tripping. I think this is because the unit is now grounded. A few years ago, they (my mother/brother in law) turned the unit on without any water in it. This caused both elements to burn out. I also think it caused some of the insulation to melt off of one of the wires, which is now intermittently contacting the metal water tank. This was what caused the shocks in the shower. I believe the whole hot water heater should be replaced.
Say What?