Phantoms in the Electrical Wiring?

[pkenny06]

There is a charge of 11 volts across the ground-to-neutral connection on a light switch in my dining room, and in one of the bedrooms. I discovered this when installing a dimmer switch in the dining room (before I installed the dimmer switch). When I put everything back together and checked it the next day…it wasn’t there. What is really strange is I checked the switch again a day later and the 11 volt charge again existed on the ground-to-neutral connection. An electrician who did work on the house said that it was a ‘phantom voltage’ …. yea right!!! What is happening????

[Unregistered-lg]

it’s a hot wire that should have been recoded black.a switch has only hot wires connected to it.when it’s off you’re reading a trickle through the bulb(s)

[bink]

If you are using a high impedance DVM, which most are, you will get a erronious voltage(phantom) reading across the switch. It means nothing and just an artifact of the circuit.

Let us know how it works out.

[Jasper]

* Sounds like you have a “Ground Currrent” running in your ground wire.
* To level set, Every wire has a certain amount of resistance measured in “Ohms”.
* A current running through the wire will cause a voltage drop depending on how far the wire is from the power panel.
* This is basically what a GFCI detects, A current going to earth ground instead of returning through a Neutral wire.
* Some where in your circuitry, some appliance or motor is leaking current to ground, most times due to faulty insulation or miswiring the Neutral Wire to earth ground.
* Get a Clamp on Ampmeter amd clamp it onto the ground wire at various points. The Ground Current gets larger as you near the Main Power Panel.
* At the main power panel, measure the current on various ground wires. You may just have one circuit that has the Ground Current.
* At the Power Panel, turn off all power, flip the main beaker off.
* Take loose each ground wire and with an ohnmeter, measure that wire to Neutral. Should be totally open, no resistance unless that ground wire is hooked up to another ground wire that returns to the Power Panel.
* At NASA at Clear Lake, we spent a lot of time finding the source of Ground Currents. Those currents drove the IBM Mainframes bananas, especially the I/O interfaces.
* Good luck… Adios… Jasper…

Jasper Castillo

[Author]

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