I was dispatched one day to a customers home where when I arrived, he said he
had gotten shocked at his water meter. The customer said he had noticed about
a couple
weeks ago when he would go to the kitchen to get a glass of water that it
would be warm coming from the cold water side, so he called an eletrican to
come look at his waterheater, but everything checked out o.k., so he and his
wife were going out of town one day so he decided to kill his main, for fear
the house might catch on fire until he could figure out the problem. When
they returned from there trip he turned the main back on , of course the water
was warm again when he ran it from the cold water side, so for some reason he
went outside to the watermeter and proceded to cut the water off, when he
reached down to touch the meter he got "SHOCKED". That's when I arrived and
put my rubber gloves on and with my volt meter touched the watermeter and the
ground and read 80 volts, was I puzzled, so I had him to go into the house and
to began killing each breaker until I lost voltage, finally he killed the
breaker feeding his heat pump and the voltage stopped ( the house had all
copper pipe for plumbing and his box was grounded to the pipe, something in
the unit was going to ground.( Before we killed the voltage, every faucet
around the house read a little better than 80 volts)