This from a customer...
Hi Mike, I hope this reaches you. Big fan and I think your bonding and grounding videos are some of the most important videos on YouTube. The importance of your work campaigning for better electrical safety, especially as it relates to pools, cannot be understated. I'm an engineer and past electrician in Indiana. I have a dilemma here and I'm not sure how to continue, and would appreciate your experienced guidance. It involves the life safety of young children, and I think you share my passion on that subject.
My friends' grandparents' house has an in-ground pool. Heated, electric pool cover, underwater 120v light, electric chlorinator, the works. Two weeks ago, while operating the pool cover, I received a nasty shock from the metal faceplate of the pool light switch. It had just rained, and everything was wet - the entire front of the receptacle was energized.
My friend was shocked as well. As you can imagine, my mind started racing imagining everything that had to have gone wrong for this to happen.
Upon further inspection, I come to realize nothing for the pool is GFCI protected - not the motor, not the pool cover, not the heater, not even the underwater light, which is how the grounded metal cover had become energized from water contact inside the junction box and didn't trip.
The pool was built in 2004 by a contractor who no longer exists (from what I'm told).
As their grandchildren swim in this pool daily, some of them as young as 8, I insisted they immediately close the pool and have an electrician out to go over everything and fix this. If something as basic as GFCI protection was skipped, then there's bound to be other issues. Here's where the fun starts!
They have their "favorite electrician" they've used for previous indoor work come over and go over everything. From what I'm told this guy is fly by night, doesn't work for a contractor, isn't insured or bonded, and doesn't even generate paperwork (no invoices etc.). This is also in Indiana where electricians are not tested/licensed.
I left a note demanding GFCI breakers be installed. There's only two circuits for everything pool related, both 120v - easy fix. I come back the next day, and first thing I noticed were no breakers, everything was exactly as before. All he did for this whole situation was replace the switch cover on the pool light switch with a new plastic cover, so with the fault it could not shock us through the plastic - I wish I were making this up. Beyond that, he went on to explain to the pool owner that the system was incompatible with GFCs because it was a tandem breaker and would trip itself if a GFCI was installed. Once again, I wish I were making this up. (neither of the circuits are on tandem breakers, not that it would even matter).
The pool owner seems to have some long standing relationship with this electrician, and has taken this as gospel. Beyond that, when it was explained to her how ludicrous and dangerous this is, she reacted in a way that seems like she now thinks I'm crazy, and overreacting. She likes this guy so much that she was offended when I said a proper insured electrician needs to come out and correct this work immediately.
I have shown her the NEC code showing this is illegal, and it didn't change anything, they like this guy that much.
Since no amount of arguing was going to get her to have a proper electrician come out and fix this, I ordered the proper GFCI breakers myself and will be installing them in the next couple of days. Like I said previously though, if that was overlooked, so were other things, so I began to check the pool bonding. Surprisingly enough, everything around the pool was properly bonded - except for one handrail. It's a two part handrail with no rungs connecting them - the left handrail is bonded, the right side is floating - you can imagine my horror. The grounding cups are seemingly under concrete and not readily accessible, so I'm not even going to touch that one. The metal floor covering near the diving board and pool cover storage is also not bonded, it's completely floating.
This leads me to my point - a proper electrician/pool expert needs to come out and remedy and inspect all of this asap, but they aren't convinced, and I'm about at my wits end. I can't stress enough that 8 year old children swim in this pool daily, and it's not even like a fault is some unlikely event - the pool installation has already shocked two people, and I don't want to see these kids killed. Any advice or communication you can suggest for me to have with the pool owner to convince them of the seriousness of this would be a godsend. The irony here is that they are a very wealthy household, it's not a money issue.
It's purely an emotional issue where they do not want to admit their favorite family electrician is a fraud. My friend (their grandson) is completely on my side, and actually sat and watched your series on equipotential bonding out of curiosity and concern. He has explained all of this to his grandparents, and they are so adamant we are wrong that it has caused fights between them - that's how much emotional investment they are putting in this hack electrician.
Am I overreacting to all of this? Looking for a sanity check.
Thanks so much, and god bless!
888.NEC.CODE (632.2633) â–ª www.MikeHolt.com
