240v and 110v coming from same outlet!

[guyana]

Help!
I'm not an electrician, but i have just enough knowledge and experience to be dangerous. I don't really have a choice, but to do it myself, since I'm currently in a 3rd world country where nothing meets a code of any sort. That being said, my problem is this:
The area is served by 240v. I have a Nippon/American 5kw voltage regulator and transformer converting the house to 110v. Most things in the house work okay, some plugs are dead. Biggest concern is that some of the outlets register 110v from hot to neutral (called 'earth' here) but 240v from Neutral to ground. In case I got it all wrong, i'm calling red-hot, black-neutral, and the bare wire-ground.
The refrigerator and kitchen appliances work okay. The computer runs through a surge protector that reads "no ground" no matter what I do. I ran a piece of rebar 5 feet into the ground and grounded the house from the transformer on. I can't believe that i get 110v from certain places i test on an outlet and 240v from others. Of all things from ground and neutral (bare wire and black). This may be the tip of a very ugly iceberg, but any help would be appreciated. Mostly, i'm concerned that the electronic equipment (desktop computer, printer and TV) will be more hurt by this screwy wiring than anything else.
Keep in mind, the options here are limited. The electrical stuff you buy in the store is shear junk, the quality of most things is uncertain. I do have a decent meter, which i have very little knowledge of but I can find ohms, AC, and a few other things. I'm not looking to make this place like America, but safe enough to plug something electronic in and not be concerned about seeing a wisp of smoke would be nice.

Thanks for any help.
Bob

[Mr T]

What country is this? Different parts of the world have different power setups.. Sounds like you may be in the Europe area..

Also some places run 50 hz and some electronics will hate you if you plug it into those. Make sure you are runnign 60 hz OR are using 50/60hz devices before plugging in.

Are you using US appliances/electronics here?

[suemarkp]

240V from neutral to ground is not good for 120V items -- they may not be designed for that much voltage to ground. Need to investigate how that power transformer is grounded on the secondary side. In the US, the center tap of the 240/120 transformer would be grounded. In most countries with 240V only service, one side of the 240V is grounded (there is no neutral really, but a grounded leg).

I'm wondering if someone grounded one end of the 120/240V transformer instead of the center tap. Maybe the transformer was designed this way from the factory which would make it unsuitable for what you're doing. On your 120V circuits, the grounding wire (usually green or bare here) would connect to the 240/120V neutral (white wire here) and this is called the Main Bonding Jumper.

I wouldn't mess with anything until you can find out more about how this is wired. Perhaps post pictures.

[pushkins]

Europe is a third world country? :evil2:

[Mr T]

Some parts of some countries over there are still unfortunatly. Hungry is a example. Only part of that country has developed.

[guyana]

No, literally, the country is Guyana. A little known country on the northeast coast of the Atlantic in South America. Somewhere near Venezuela and the Amazon Rain Forest. I'll upload some pics if that'll help. For the life of me, I can't understand why i'm getting that kind of electrical current. I got shocked pretty good the other day fooling around in the panel. This house has 3 panels. I thought i turned off the main (located close to where the line comes into the house). From there, it goes downstairs to the convertor and then back upstairs. I was undoing a wire going to a plug , thinking i had disconnected the juice and lit myself up. Probably not as bad as you guys have done in your career, but exciting nonetheless. This house may have some real problems, I'd just like to assure myself that I'm not going to ruin a good computer and TV in the next year.
I'll get some pics up in the next day or two.

Thanks again for any help.

Bob

[guyana]

Oh yeah. 60hz from what everyone says. How can I tell? I do have that meter, but what do I check where?

Thanks again,

[Mr T]

Look on your electrical meter, it may be listed on it. If you bought any electronics such as clocks, look for a marking on it somewhere.

Otherwise the "technical way" is to get a U.S. record player and a record. If it plays right it's 60hz.. if it's slow ... 50 :vollkommenauf:

[suemarkp]

You can look here: http://wikitravel.org/en/Electrical_systems

Click on the map to make it bigger. It looks like most of northern South America is 60 Hz, but there is one little guy who is 50 Hz. I think you're 60Hz, and that little guy may be French Guiana.

[guyana]

Here are a few photos that may make the problem clearer. The american type surface plugs I installed by merely piggybacking off of the original plugs. The other type are throughout the house. Looking at the main box, aren't all of those ground wires supposed to be connected to something besides each other? On the back of the transformer, you can see the ground wire that goes to a grounding rod outside, but I just thought that they were supposed to be tied to something. (The box is attached to a wooden wall.) Thanks for any help, hope this makes the situations clearer.

According to the www.wikitravel.org site, we're in the 60hz area.

[Mr T]

Unplug anything you value untill this is resolved. Also unplug anything with a ground prong on the plug!! You could be putting voltage on the casings of your device.

Can you post pics of the inside of your panel where you are questioning this . While in there measure around with all your hots/neutrals/grounds in the panel. Also measure from each terminal to a known good ground (like a ground rod)

You need to rule out any work you have already done as being the cause of this before you can fix this.

[guyana]

having serious trouble uploading the rest of the photos

[junkcollector]

having serious trouble uploading the rest of the photos

One thing you can do is upload them to a site like Photobucket.com and link to the pictures in your posts.:razz:

[guyana]

Maybe this will help shed some light on the problem.
I'll test around in the box and upload some photos of that later on.

http://s302.photobucket.com/albums/nn88/electricalnightmare/

thanks for the suggestion to link. it was taking forever to upload directly for some reason. (pronounced '3rd world' )

thanks again.

[suemarkp]

I can't really read all the terminal labels on the front of your transformer. Does it have a diagram as to how the primary and secondary coils are wired to those terminals on the front, where the ground is connected, and if there are any common connections between the primary and secondary?

On that non-US plug where you measured voltages, was that powered from this transformer or directly from your 240V utility service? I'm not sure what is normal for your non-US outlets, but I would expect 240V line to line, 240 line to ground on one pin, and 0V line to ground from the other line pin. And it probably matters which of those two pins is the one that has voltage relative to ground. Your measurements seem messed up with 120V in one of those conditions.

On the US receptacles, the wider blade is the one where the white wire goes, and this should is supposed to be 0V to ground. Equipment takes this into consideration when it is made. Yours appears to be even worse here at 240V to ground. A table lamp with a normal 120V edison base bulb would be a shock hazard when screwing in the bulb. So I think you have some polarity issues, and your grounding may not be from the proper place on the transformer. Your transformer may be unsuitable for this application, but we won't know unless you can post a diagram as to how those coils are wired to the terminals.

Finally, do you have a main utility circuit breaker panel like we have in the US (except it is all 240V)? If so, are there any wiring diagrams in it as to how power is delivered and where ground goes on it?

[guyana]

Okay -
Before photobucket.com was suggested by 'junkcollector', i was having to reduce the size of the photos and the quality to get this forum to accept them. Now that i can link photobucket.com, i'll get some better pics up tomorrow.

Diagrams, i don't know, but I just bought it new 2 months ago, so if it has 'em, i should still be able to read them. I'll check and photograph.

The entire house is reduced to 110/120 through the transformer with the exception of one wire going to an electric shower head (heated showers aren't the norm here). They have a great little invention that heats just the water coming out of the shower head. It has 2 settings. Warm and hot. The hot is actually too hot. It doesn't have a tank, is self contained, and you can get it in 110v or 220. Its the best $25 i ever spent. I think theres only one other person in 30 miles that has one. The locals accept cold showers as the norm and don't understand a need for heated showers!

The south american plug in the pics is wired from the transformer, to the panel to the plug. The american plugs are just wired from those plugs, nothing fancy.

Unfortunately, there is NO white wire. The 2 wire here is Red, Black and Bare.

I'll try to get enough photos tomorrow to make it understandable. I didn't know what to take photos of, but now, i have a good idea.

Thanks to all for your input and help.

[suemarkp]

Why is the whole house powered by that one small transformer? Why not feed the south american receptacles from the wire on the input side of the transformer? Do normal south american homes that are 240V only have fuse panels or does one circuit run the whole house?

You're most likely not going to find one transformer that can power both types of receptacles because they use different grounding strategies. Are there other places you can go that have "normal" or "correct" electricity where you take some measurements of their south american receptacles? I need confirmation that the correct way to wire the south american receptacles is as I described -- 240V line to line, 240V one line to ground, 0V other line to ground.

[guyana]

................

[guyana]

Thought I'd let you know I found the problem, albeit after an entire day wasted looking everywhere and fearing that I'd have to do lots of tearing out and replacing. Also, I kept getting shockedl (quite well sometimes) even though I killed the power at ALL 3 boxes.

Here was the problem.

The transformer was wired from the main box which was wired from the meter without opening it (as it had a seal on it) by an american who has a pretty good grasp of electrical work (not certified, but with plenty of training and several years of experience - long story. Also, not me.)

When I located an electrician here (didn't think one existed), he showed up on a raggedy bicycle and with only 3 tools (also barefoot except for plastic sandals, like flip flops, but thats very standard here). However, he truly seemed to have a good grasp of what he was doing. Turns out that the american friend of mine who hooked up the house wiring through the existing meter and added the 110v transformer/surge protector pulled the Blue wire (yes blue) to the hot side of the first box, through the transformer hot side and continued on tying in the house. He hooked up the brown wire (yes brown) to the neutral, thinking that brown was closest to black and therefore...

The blue and brown wire existed only from the meter to the first panel. Everything else was red, black, bare (earth/ground).

So everytime i checked two terminals, i would usually check red to black I would get 110v or 240, not realizing that the energy was coming from the black wire. Also, not matter how many breakers you shut off, if the power is running into the neutral (black) you get shocked really good when you touch any two wrong points. Also, the ground wire was energized which confused me to know end, because i don't know as much as you guys do, but after disconnecting everything everywhere, i was still getting 220/240 out of a ground wire which should have nothing. To say the least, it was perplexing me. This guy had a tool like a screwdriver that would light up (i'm sure you guys know what i'm talking about, but i don't have one) if you touched just ONE wire at a time, thereby quickly telling him which wire had power, not just what voltage you get between two points.

I guess thats why they pay you guys the big bucks.

I was a professional firemen for over 20 years and plenty of fires got blamed on 'Electrical'. We used to joke that if the investigators couldn't figure out what started a blaze, that was their fallback. Its always easy to blame 'electrical' if theres nothing but a bunch of burned wires. of course keep in mind that EVERYTHING is burned, not just the wiring.

Anyway, believe or not, that solved my whole problem.
Except that my surge protector (rather expensive one bought just before I moved down here) is now junk i guess, because after my day of undoing everything and turning power on and off and getting shocked, when we finally figured out the problem and fixed it, the surge protector's alarm keeps going off and won't stop, so I guess thats money down the drain.

Nothing got fried other than an expensive surge protector, so thats not terrible news.

Thanks for all the input. I'm sure that if I hadn't gotten really fortunate ( I swear, ive never heard of an electrician down here, and EVERYBODY does there own plumbing, you should see it) i would have finally figured it out with all the help.

Thanks again,
Bob

ps - reason for the blue and brown wiring - Electrician said thats one of the challenges of the job here. There is no standard supplier of wiring. they get wiring from England, Jamaica, Trinidad, the U.S., and somewhere else. Therefore, they have to be familiar with the wiring of the various countries, because, whatever is shipped in is what is used. There is also, no inspection agency or at least not in the sense of actually pulling permits and getting inspected. Ought to make for some really good house fires, huh?

[junkcollector]

Thanks for letting us know!

:rock:

P.S. That screwdriver that lights up is indeed a tester that one can purchase quite readily here in the states.

http://images1.hdpi.com/product/gardner-bender-tester-GST-201.jpg

It works by making a return path through the user! They work pretty well and are a nice simple way of finding the hot wire.

I gotta ask, what were his two other tools?

[guyana]

The only other thing he carried (barefoot and all) was a phillips head screwdriver (called 'star point' here) and an old meter with tape on the face. Looked like you could pick one up at a yard sale like it for a dollar! Gotta keep telling myself ' brown hot...blue ground....brown hot.....blue ground....'

[Mr T]

So he doesnt use the number of hairs standing up on his arm to determine the voltage he is "testing"? (dont try this at home kids)

[pushkins]

I'm a fan of the tongue test.....hell, it works on 9 volt batteries.

[Mr T]

Anything more then 9v and you wont be talking for a while.....:hahaha: