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- 19 Apr 2004
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I\\\'ve come across something weird and wondered if any of you guys could give me a bit of advice.
Recently rewired some lighting upstairs as found there was no earth circuit for it.
As no power in loft until I finished (upstairs lights isolated), I wired all new junctions up carefully and switched the power back on.
At this point the new earth was not connected to the house earth circuit but was essentially as is before including new earth connections - lights worked fine but when I tested the earth circuit (as yet unearthed) I found that my live detector lit up!
I began testing each bit of new wiring I had put in and all showed the same but I could find no fault - I had satisfactorily sleeved up all earth wires etc.
I became so miffed and flumuxed that I decided to test a complete new piece of wire:
- I folded the earth back on one end of the 1.00 mm twin and earth and insulated it.
On the other end I folded back the live and neutral and insulated them.
- So in summary I had a single short length of wire connected to live and neutral at one end butonly an exposed earth at the other (connected to nothing).
... and ... you guessed it! ... it showed live (dimly).
eh? what is causing this - is this just an induced current or do we have a real problem???
will the problem go away when the earth wire is connected to the earth circuit?
would a proper volt meter show me if whatever voltage is there is acceptable? what voltage would be acceptable?
Recently rewired some lighting upstairs as found there was no earth circuit for it.
As no power in loft until I finished (upstairs lights isolated), I wired all new junctions up carefully and switched the power back on.
At this point the new earth was not connected to the house earth circuit but was essentially as is before including new earth connections - lights worked fine but when I tested the earth circuit (as yet unearthed) I found that my live detector lit up!
I began testing each bit of new wiring I had put in and all showed the same but I could find no fault - I had satisfactorily sleeved up all earth wires etc.
I became so miffed and flumuxed that I decided to test a complete new piece of wire:
- I folded the earth back on one end of the 1.00 mm twin and earth and insulated it.
On the other end I folded back the live and neutral and insulated them.
- So in summary I had a single short length of wire connected to live and neutral at one end butonly an exposed earth at the other (connected to nothing).
... and ... you guessed it! ... it showed live (dimly).
eh? what is causing this - is this just an induced current or do we have a real problem???
will the problem go away when the earth wire is connected to the earth circuit?
would a proper volt meter show me if whatever voltage is there is acceptable? what voltage would be acceptable?