Skimmer Voltage/ground Leak, new pump? Vertex IN-80/100

[craigwmiller]

After tuns of more troubleshooting I shutoff the main pump which (due to water level) shutoff the skimmer power... SAME PROBLEM.

So, then I removed everything else, and connected just the skimmer grounding pin to the outlet's grounding pin - same problem.

THEN, I took the ph probe into a glass of water (which I've done before), when isolated, no problem.

Then I added the grounding probe to that glass of water, instant difference...


All this on the phone with waynemah to help troubleshoot verbally through everything -- when he come out with:

"HEY! you remember last summer when we were fixing the check valve in your hot water tank, there was those sparks when the water lines touched??!!! Did you ever look into that further??"

bingo, I think the issue is that something ELSE is electrifying my ground, and the skimmer is then (possibly due to bad shielding or simply broken internally) taking the electrified ground and spreading it to the tank.


My wife is out now, back in about 30 minutes -- I'll start testing ground fault potentials when she is around to kick me if I touch the wrong thing... The thing that is causing the problem is probably draining some current to ground, which is a slightly higher potential (possibly just a few millivolts) that the tank is noticing.


As per my last post regarding a DC potential that I have in my system with the skimmer plugged in -- my thought now is that there is a DC short somewhere, and the power is coming IN the skimmer, not out the skimmer... As to why the grounding probe doesn't do anything could be that it's DC, and that's creating a magnetic field or small current via the skimmer that an AC leak would not. Again just ~160 millivolts here...


Thanks for all the input!! Back to you with news (hopefully that I've fixed it, I just hope the thing that is possibly causing me a small short or leak isn't my TV or something else expensive LOL)