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<blockquote data-quote="Tom Manchester" data-source="post: 22704" data-attributes="member: 82">Re: odd electrical situationIt&#039;s (kind of) funny you mention the water heater, because that&#039;s what sort of tipped things off for me to dig deeper. I was actually trying to find the breaker for the water heater because it&#039;s a big residential size unit and it&#039;s just sitting there wasting a ton of power when all I ever do is flush the toilet and wash my hands, so I deemed it an unnecessary expense. Apparently the previous tenant had an ice cream truck business and installed the larger water heater for washing utensils, and I must say they did a really crappy job on the plumbing. So I&#039;m pretty sure when I pulled the cover off the water heater near the heating elements, it said it was a 240V unit. Naturally I&#039;m looking in the panel for a double breaker, or at the very least a pair of singles (i know, not to code) to shut it off. But low and behold it would seem that the guy had wired it to 120v service, as there is no tandem breaker :-/Ryan: It&#039;s definitely 120/240v single phase, just like a house. There are 4 wires coming into the panel, 2 hots, a neutral, and an uninsulated ground. I think it&#039;s this way so that they could ground it back at the meter bank on the side of the building as opposed to individual ground rods in each unit.The layout is as follows: Pole transformer &gt; underground feeder &gt; meter bank on side of building &gt; service disconnect box on side of building &gt; panel inside unitIf this were my own place I would dig further into the stuff on the side of the building and probably have this figure out in 10 minutes, but like Royce mentioned, my lease prohibits me from messing with anything beyond what I can meter at the outlets. I just can&#039;t figure where this mystery 26V is coming from. The only way it could be possible is if either the neutral or the ground were compromised somewhere, because theoretically if they are bonded at the service entrance they should be at the same potential.I&#039;ll try what Silas suggested and turn everything off at the breaker and see if the voltage goes away, and then turn each circuit on individually and see if the voltage returns.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tom Manchester, post: 22704, member: 82"] Re: odd electrical situation It's (kind of) funny you mention the water heater, because that's what sort of tipped things off for me to dig deeper. I was actually trying to find the breaker for the water heater because it's a big residential size unit and it's just sitting there wasting a ton of power when all I ever do is flush the toilet and wash my hands, so I deemed it an unnecessary expense. Apparently the previous tenant had an ice cream truck business and installed the larger water heater for washing utensils, and I must say they did a really crappy job on the plumbing. So I'm pretty sure when I pulled the cover off the water heater near the heating elements, it said it was a 240V unit. Naturally I'm looking in the panel for a double breaker, or at the very least a pair of singles (i know, not to code) to shut it off. But low and behold it would seem that the guy had wired it to 120v service, as there is no tandem breaker :-/ Ryan: It's definitely 120/240v single phase, just like a house. There are 4 wires coming into the panel, 2 hots, a neutral, and an uninsulated ground. I think it's this way so that they could ground it back at the meter bank on the side of the building as opposed to individual ground rods in each unit. The layout is as follows: Pole transformer > underground feeder > meter bank on side of building > service disconnect box on side of building > panel inside unit If this were my own place I would dig further into the stuff on the side of the building and probably have this figure out in 10 minutes, but like Royce mentioned, my lease prohibits me from messing with anything beyond what I can meter at the outlets. I just can't figure where this mystery 26V is coming from. The only way it could be possible is if either the neutral or the ground were compromised somewhere, because theoretically if they are bonded at the service entrance they should be at the same potential. I'll try what Silas suggested and turn everything off at the breaker and see if the voltage goes away, and then turn each circuit on individually and see if the voltage returns. [/QUOTE]

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