[QUOTE=gotpasswords]
Wow. Where is “here”
Here is Australia, no offence but I'll never visit not with those standards.
have a look at www.sales@trioelectrix.com
AS3760 is what my business does, sure beats toolmaking. Best career move I ever made. Well now I know why Trio is leading the world in this area. sorry if I stuffed the link but force of habit, big no-no with last employer.In this case, its referred to as “line voltage”.
Since this is an extension of an existing circuit, I’m betting the existing circuit had the problem before you extended it.
Knob and tube is almost always not grounded.
oh&s : ntucker’s setup isn’t a commercial workplace of the kind you describe. We have standards over here too. His is a home office. Residential rules apply.
ntucker I suspect you did the work on the sly (sans inspector, sans permit).
An inspector should have looked at the plan, had you describe the existing circuit, test it, and would have decided if it had the capacity to add to or if you needed a new run. Since you are working with a mixed knob&tube/romex set of circuits, he would have required you to add a new grounded circuit for this room, going directly to the panel.
Existing ungrounded circuits are ok with the inspector, as long as you don’t touch them, but as soon as you go beyond swapping out a defective switch or outlet, the whole circuit must be replaced.
If you use a quality multimeter, you should get zero volts from neutral-to-ground. If this is the case, this circuit is functioning OK, but it’s picking up inductive voltage from another circuit. This isn’t the worst thing in the world. It happens, and things don’t necessarily go boom. But a TV projector should be grounded properly, which yours isn’t. Surge protector strips of the kind you’d use on a computer, depend on a ground to function properly. They ground the surge and destroy themselves.
If it’s possible, you’d be wise to run this circuit directly to the panel using grounded romex.
60volts across the closed switch??
Fellas, could it be that the nuetral is being switched and that is the source of the open grouind? Especially if someone extended knob and tube and “used” the nuetral at some point as the ground. If the switch is opening the nuetral then you would loose the ground also.
This switch and the outlet that feeds it are suspect. Even more so since you’ve said that the nuetral isn’t always on the same side of the outlet. Whomever hooked up the switch could have thought they were switching the hot and accidentily grabbed the nuetral…
[QUOTE=NutMagnet]
In this case, its referred to as “line voltage”.
Since this is an extension of an existing circuit, I’m betting the existing circuit had the problem before you extended it.
Knob and tube is almost always not grounded.
oh&s : ntucker’s setup isn’t a commercial workplace of the kind you describe. We have standards over here too. His is a home office. Residential rules apply.
Sorry brother but AS3760 states that a home office is a workplace, your office and all it's gear would have to be done but the house doesn't. Workcover does tend to overkill in a lot of areas, but more and more people are sueing with the Duty Of Care angle and as you and I both know "You have to cover your own arse".
Yours is a good example for me, sooner or later I'm going to come across one just like it, but I'll be prepared. there is a bright side to your problem It's taught me something.[QUOTE=oh&s]
What have you learned? We don’t know the exact problem yet.
Well the laws are different for a start, but as I said I'm bound to come across one just like it and I've already quizzed workcover. I'll have one advantage my MT26A unit will tell me on a L.C.D. screen in english in 1sec if the problem is say earth leakage, poor earthing, residual current etc, and I still get paid. My STCMKD unit will do the same for all the appliances within 10secs. That should all take about 1/2 maybe 3/4hr tops and thats checking everything twice. This gear really speeds things up and best of all It won't pass anything that is wrong no matter what, if I say test a power drill incorrectly it will fail you can't bullshit the machine.
So to summerise; If this scenario were here the wiring would have to be replaced, and I still get paid regardless. Not only that I can say I don't want to do it, it's failed, I'm only hear to do the testing. see ya later jack. The customer gets the bill, workcover gets a copy and I move on to the next job. Not bad eh.So basically the conversation between you and the costomer goes like this;
You: “All done, found some problems, looks like a bad ground over there and a loose neutral over on this one.”
C: “Can you fix them?”
You: “Nope, but here’s the bill anyway. That’ll be 87 monetary units please.”
C: “You mean I have to pay someone else to fix in and then call you back to re-certify at the cost of 87 additional monetary units?”
You: “Yes, please”
Sounds swell to me.
BTW how much do one of those fancy testers cost you? About 2500 monetary units I’m guessing.
(I wonder if that unit will fry the crap out of a circuit board if you’re not carefull)
Whoa, hold up. You’re jumping to some conclusions. First, I didn’t say that this was an extension of an existing circuit, I said it might be, and that I don’t know. Second, if any work was done on the sly, it sure as hell wasn’t done by me. I haven’t done any electrical work in this house. So I don’t know what happened. That’s what I’m here trying to figure out.
Er, in this case, “home office” means “the extra bedroom, where I happen to put my desk, my computer, and my ‘THINK’ sign.” I doubt that grants it any special legal status.
Prety close. If it's an easy fix I'll do it, If it's a big job I get one of my mates over. I do the re-test for free, (my mate includes me in his bill).
The unit won't fry the board, but it can fry faults in the wiring which is what we want. You could have some terrorist style fun with it though, you wack it in a power point, turn it on, pop goes the breaker half the place loses power and you run like the clappers.
You got the prices bang on brother. did I mention that these units were designed & built in Australia, & that the STCMKD unit weighs in at 4kilos.Huh? Please elaborate. While it is true the neutral wire may have 60 Hz current on it, the voltage (AC + DC components) between neutral and ground should be close to 0 V RMS if it is wiring correctly.
I’m on travel right now (SLC, UT), and I went over to the bar and had a few beers at the restaurant next door. Being the EE geek I am, I thought about ntucker’s problem while sipping a pint of Polygamy Porter.
Just a guess, but I think you have a faulty/open ground. The voltages you’re reading might be explainable when you consider that (in Romex[sup]TM[/sup]) there’s capacitance between an open ground wire and the neutral wire, and capacitance between an open ground wire and the hot wire. When combined with the input impedance of your voltmeter, the reactance of the capacitance and your voltmeter form a voltage divider. This may explain the voltages you’re reading.
At any rate, the problem is likely in the ground connection. There should be a low impedance path between the receptacle’s ground lug and the ground/neutral bus bar in the breaker box. Verify if this is the case.
Have you taken resistance readings at the outlet yet?, and could you confirm if the nuetral (ground) is being switched?
Just think MATE,
If you had a MT26A this shite would have been fixed by now. (not trying to be smart just factual). No wonder Australia leads the word. Yet we are stupid enough to sit back and follow suit.Are you trying to sell him a $1600 piece of equipment, or help with a problem? 
So the MT26A fixes the problem, too? Because I’d guess that anyone who knows what their doing could have fixed this problem by now, with or without an MT26A.
If you just want to crow about how things are so much better in Australia, take it to the pit instead of my thread, ok, “mate”?
What’s your problem with actually using your brain to solve a problem, rather than some magical box that tells you what’s wrong? Maybe I’m actually trying to learn something.
Jesus, you got me so worked up I committed a their/they’re/there offense. I am humiliated.
That’s odd. I wanted to look up the specs of this MT26A for myself, so I typed it into Google and got nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. You’d think such a useful tool would have some information about it online, wouldn’t you?
I wonder if we’re being woooshed here.
MT26A, if read fast could sound like “I’m too sexy”.
ntucker
My sincere apologies for accusing you of doing the work. I did jump to that conclusion. I still suspect that the circuit is an extension of an ungrounded one. It’s just a more likely scenario than a new circuit with a failing ground. But we await your sleuthing.
Crafter_Man
What I’m saying is that these wires are running parallel for some distance - possibly all the way to the panel where the neutral is bonded and the ground is not, and likely to be causing phantom voltage between the neutral and ground. Its better explained in the link I posted earlier.
A cheaper test device doesn’t load the circuit and will read the inductive current, while a good tester (like an MT26A 
) will read 0v.
So whether you “see” 60v or 0v, you will still be looking at an open or partially open ground. That’s what the phrase “and are capacitively coupled to each other” means. If they were directly coupled to each other (as they should be at the panel), there would be no voltage, regardless of the quality of the test device.
The article discusses “phantom voltages,” which I alluded to in my previous post (and in past threads). It occurs when a meter w/ high input impedance becomes one of the resistors in a voltage divider. But a significant phantom voltage will not occur between neutral and ground in a properly-wired system. This is because the neutral/ground connection is a low-impedance path. In a properly-wired system, the voltage between neutral and ground will only be the voltage drop along the neutral current-carrying wire, which (I am guessing) should rarely exceeds 5 VAC RMS for typical outlet.