need help with electrical problems

17 years ago

where to begin?

to begin: at the moment my question revolves around my electric oven. when i connect it, all hell breaks loose, that is my sink gets electrified, the metal gas line behind it gives shocks.

i pulled out the plug from the oven to the wall outlet, the oven by the way functions perfectly. the oven itself has 3 wires. brown, blue and yellow (ground). I turn on my multimeter to continuity check, which always reads "1" at start. i checked for continuity with my multimeter and i get a readout of 1900 or something like that between the brown and blue. I mean, shouldn't this be absolutely "1", no connection at all?

and, in all the house circuitry, when i do a continuity check between the positive and negative (is this correct terminology?) holes in the outlets, i get continuity. that is, a connection. As well as continuity between the ground and any other wire. my fuses do not blow or anything. Is any of this normal?

thanks

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Comments (6)

Ron Natalie
17 years ago
Doing continuity tests on live circuits is not going to be healthy for a lot of meters.

Something is seriously wrong with this circuit (and in addition, unless you have plastic plumbing, I suspect something is seriously wrong with the house bonding). Further, I don't know what meter you are using but I assume "1" is how it indicates an open circuit (most show dashes or OL in that case).

The first place to look (turn OFF the power first), is the wiring of the oven jack. My off hand guess is that one of the hot wires touching the ground AND for some reason the grounding system is not working properly as the breaker doesn't blow.

The fact that the plumbing is electrified is a serious problem indicating serious defects in the wiring. I'd call an electrician and shutoff the breaker to this circuit (even that is not safe enough probably).
joed
17 years ago
You are not in North america. Most of the info and users here are in NA.
It sounds like your stove has a short to ground and is electricfying all grounded items in you house. In order for this to happen and not trip the breaker your water and gas line must not be bonded to your panel correctly. This may be beyond a regular DIY solution.

Also an ohm meter should read infinte or open when not connected to anything, not 1.
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bardos
Original Author
17 years ago
thanks for the replies.
i checked the oven outlet and it looked ok. the oven itself appears to have problems. is this so?

but beyond that, there is continuity all over the place.

what does "bonded to your panel" mean?
petey_racer
17 years ago
Sounds like an open neutral to me with a 3-wire bonded oven. Then again, he is in Spain so I have no idea if this is even relevant.
jmvd20
17 years ago
I think your meter is reading (1) when not connected to anything because you damaged it while doing a continuity check on a live circuit.
Billl
17 years ago
Does this happen with anything else you plug in, or just the oven?

As for your meter, the live wire goes into the appliance, through a bunch of stuff (coils, clocks, lights etc) and the returns via the neutral. If there is anything inside the appliance that is always on (a light, clock etc) there will be an open electrical path that you can detect and it will have some fixed resistance.

The bigger concern is what is happening behind the scenes. With alternating current, there is no "positive" and "negative". You have a live that switches between positive and negative and a neutral that is getting pushed and pulled by the live. The live is coming to your house from a power grid. The neutral is connected to a huge source of electrons, the earth, at your home. If your pipes and sink are becoming charged, that means that the live is pushing and pulling electrons there instead of from the earth as intended. This is a dangerous situation because electricity chooses the path of least resistance to get to ground. Metal pipes and wires usually provide that path. If they aren't doing it, you may accidentally end up providing that path with your body and could receive a severe shock.

Since this is a potentially dangerous situation, I would suggest you get an electrician over immediately.