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So the electrician replaced the stand pipe on son's house. Of coarse he had to separate the line from the pole from the house leads, as he needed to replace it all to the new circuit panel. I asked how he can do that without a shock? He said it's just like birds landing on the wire. As long as you're not grounded you're okay. So alter on I'm repairing some code work in the basement and found a wire that was hot. I touched it with the left forefinger and thumb and got the tingle. So why was there a tingle? I was not grounded. Shoes and socks on the dry basement floor. I don't understand....
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tingle?
what was your thumb touching?
your hair is conductive!
if you touched ONLY one wire and weren't grounded ANYWHERE you should have NOT gotten shocked.
suspended ceiling grid is grounded somewhere. -
No grid, just bare wood all around the basement ceiling. Right hand had a a pair of dikes with insulated handles. Left thumb and forefinger touched two wire that were spiraled around each other. Got a tingle as far as the wrist. Shoe wear were the socks inside of heavy work boots. Floor was tiled cement.Comment
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shock
I suppose the next question is: why were you working with a live wire [circuit?]
maybe unknown to you, your wrist contacted the bundled ground wire within the cable jacket.
In any case shut off the circuit breaker that feeds it.Comment
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Yeah. It was an unknown circuit. I was under the impression all the power to it was off. More my fault than anyone else. from that point on I checked every line. And both, black and white! No more trust. There was a pack of wires in that 4x4. Thought there was only one feeder. Found there was another one! When I was very young I heard my uncle and Mom talking about the 'juice'. "Turn it off so you don't waste the juice!" I thought "what juice?" So I took one of Mom's bobby pins and stuck it in there to see what color this 'juice' was. Didn't like what I found. It tingled the finger tips. Didn't do that again. Well....not on purpose....Comment
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junction boxes
you got to be careful with junction boxes. as you found out multiple circuits can be found in here.
if you have three cables in one box its almost safe to assume, one hot, one switch leg, and one load circuit. or one hot and two downstream feeds.
look closely, you could have a three wire, fed off a tandem breaker with two hots, sharing a common neutral to two circuitsComment
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