Something went Bad Wrong!

Hmm. A nail shorted one lead of the transformer secondary to one lead of the sump pump. When the sump kicked in you got 140 VAC? There must have been something else wrong.

Aside from that, I don't see how the sump could send voltage when it kicked in unless there was an open neutral. All the residential sump pumps I've seen have constant hot, neutral and ground connections. When the float rises a switch is thrown, completing the circuit, but even then the voltage on the neutral and ground wires should be ~0.

High voltage induced to a low voltage wire.... nice, thats why NFPA 70 National Electrical Code says 1 foot separation between Low Voltage and High Voltage Wiring.

could of had a floating ground at the pump. ground would have then gone to the panel. resulting in a larger voltage from the supply..

rural america is full of old wiring with a weak or missing device ground. RTS

Think so?

That's a possibility but if that were the case I'd expect there to be voltage on the shorted low voltage line at all times. Any thoughts?

not the loop, only in reference to a good earth ground :o)

((check how solid the ground is by inserting a diode in series with the leg being checked and ampmeter it to ground. NOTE start with the hightest range on the meter and work down to the lowest.. Really hi current tells me its a really bad ground at the pump, low current says panel ground slightly better than pump..))

RTS

Happy Holidays

Most alarm guys don't carry a meter that has the range to measure the AMP load of a sump pump. Unless you're a regular electrician you're probably not going to carry one. I have been bitten pretty hard by electrical grounds and neutrals before. Usually it means some Jake leg electrician has been there.

I'm puzzled as to how you got 140VAC in reference to earth ground.

think thats odd try this one. had a customer with a grounded telephone ckt. L1 to L2 ie.. red to green had 49.5 vdc red to ground had 53.5 vdc green to ground had 35.4 vdc had 60 cycle hum on audio of loop when ringing ckt had 110 vac red to green..

Telephone guy (AT&T / Bellsouth) said there wasn't anything wrong with the ckt.. (to quote him he had over 46 vdc on the pair so nothing could be wrong)

best we could figure the difference of the 53.5 over the 49.5 was a loop back impedence where the impedence voltage added to the primary voltage causing the extra voltage to show up..

the best part was that the distance from the customer to the telephone switchframe was apx. 125 feet. however the line had 3 (get that) three splices in the overhead wire..

to my knowledge to this day the phone company hasn't fixed the grounds. (been 4 years)

We moved the rj-31 over to another l> >

the 140 vac is most likely the results of the transformer adding the primary and secondary windings due to the short in the wires.. ie.. 140 total - 16.5 secondary = 123.5 vac house voltage

I think they call that an autotransformer where the primary coil adds to the secondary to give a higher voltage output..

RTS

And to think I was just about to get my brain around this thing and now.........................

Only one word comes to mind.

Huh WTF. Oh Ok two words or so.

That's about what you'd expect to get. Anywhere from 48 to 51 VDC is normal with no phones off the hook.

I'm not sure what the potential to earth ground is supposed to be.

Probably induction from nearby 110VAC wires.

The last time I checked ring voltage was around 90 VAC. I don't know if that's universal or just what SNET was using in CT.

Telco Idiots are notorious for blindly going by a single reading rather than trying to resolve problems.

Nothing telco surprises me any more. When they were installing the line in our new (to us) home/office in CT many years ago I had ordered a 100-pair drop because, according to the telco rep, that was the next size up from a 12-pair and we already had 12 lines. Engineering came out a month before and surveyed the lines. They assured me all was fine -- there were plenty of available circuits.

On the appointed day I showed up early with a thermos of hot coffee to await the telco installers. They arrived in two separate trucks. One guy asked the other, "Did you bring the spool?" The second said, "I thought you were bringing it." They decided that instead of driving back to their office they could use a spare spool from behind the nearest CO that had "plenty" of cable on it. They spent half the morning pulling the cable from several poles away, over to the house. Sure enough, it was about 20 feet short. They then drove to anouther CO, got another spool and spent the next few hours doing an aerial splice.

Later in the afternoon they told me they would have to come back another day because there wasn't a hole in the wall through which to run the cable. They said they were'nt allowed to make any holes. My trusty Bosch drill took care of that.

Sounds typical... :^)

I've used autoformers extensively. They make great volume controls. But I've never before heard of one adding the primary and secondary voltages. I guess it's possible though.

I'd say about as "possible" as "Attention Burglar! Go Ahead Make My Day!"... Wouldn't you??

I feel for you, bro. I recently had to replace a fire alarm panel and communicator that wound up fried because the customer's tenant decided to "hot wire" a 220 volt ironing machine through the building's "common area" breaker box. Strange thing is that we had 60 volts on the neutral side and 240 on the hot. Go figure!