Test run/shock felt when touching kettle

[celtic_dude]

So I am running a test run in my electric brewery tonight with just water and auto tuning my pid. When running the element in my BK, I touched the kettle while putting in the tubing so that I can recirculate the water to help even out temps and felt a shock :fro: Wow that was interesting! Where should I check out to see why this happened? Thanks

 

[iijakii]

I'd start with the kettle ground.

 

[celtic_dude]

Will check that. Also noticed that the gfci on the breaker keeps tripping when boil kettle starts reaching 212f

 

[barryhannah]

I wouldn't touch it again until you've had a registered electrician check things out. It's not worth your life.

 

[wstev]

it could be anything, isolate the element from your control panel and do a continuity check between your element enclosure(ground) and your live wires on element. if you read infinity, then the problem is in your control panel, then id start with maybe your SSR bleeding into ground thru your heat sink. Check your plugins as well. But from what you said Id almost say its in your element enclosure, did you open it up afterwards and see if there's any moisture in there?

 

[hio3791]

Agreed with above. I say you are a lucky dude. Did you run continuity tests between your kettle and ground?

 

[celtic_dude]

Well I think I have figured out the problem. Seems like there may have been two. Not sure of this first one but the ground may have been touching one of the hots inside the element enclosure. I am using the ones from brewhardware. So got that fixed.

But what may be a real culprit is that the ground coming into my spa panel is not connected at the other end. My brother(electrician) moved my 220 dryer run a few months back so to move the dryer to the new laundry room as well as feeding the spa panel to turn either the dryer run on or the brew panel on. Well apparently he just added onto the old wire in a junction box which is correct but when I opened up the junction box, the old wire did not have a ground in it so the new wires ground is just flowing in the breeze so to speak! I can not believe he did that. I am so pissed at him. Even I would know better and I am not an electrician.

So before finding this 'grave' error' I was testing the receptacles in the control panel. The 110v all seemed fine. But the 220v were a little weird. One hot would show 220 when paired to the white(neutral) and the other hot showed 0. And of course the ground did nothing with any of the connections. Can this also be due to the missing ground connection?

 

[passedpawn]

Well I think I have figured out the problem. Seems like there may have been two. Not sure of this first one but the ground may have been touching one of the hots inside the element enclosure. I am using the ones from brewhardware. So got that fixed.

But what may be a real culprit is that the ground coming into my spa panel is not connected at the other end. My brother(electrician) moved my 220 dryer run a few months back so to move the dryer to the new laundry room as well as feeding the spa panel to turn either the dryer run on or the brew panel on. Well apparently he just added onto the old wire in a junction box which is correct but when I opened up the junction box, the old wire did not have a ground in it so the new wires ground is just flowing in the breeze so to speak! I can not believe he did that. I am so pissed at him. Even I would know better and I am not an electrician.

So before finding this 'grave' error' I was testing the receptacles in the control panel. The 110v all seemed fine. But the 220v were a little weird. One hot would show 220 when paired to the white(neutral) and the other hot showed 0. And of course the ground did nothing with any of the connections. Can this also be due to the missing ground connection?

As you know, leaving the ground unconnected is a dangerous mistake. Glad you found it.

With 240VAC, you should read

• 120V from either load line to neutral.
• 120V from either load line to ground.
• zero between neutral and ground (unless there is an active load, in which case you might get a volt or two).
• 240VAC between the load lines.

Anything else means you've got some wiring issue there. Make sure you know which wires are which, then re-check your brother's work!

 

[WileECoyote]

Put it back the way it was and brew a batch of ShockTop, JK lol.

Hope all go's well from here on out !

Cheers

 

[celtic_dude]

Looking a little more closely it looks like he just forgot to attach the ground to the junction box.

 

[WileECoyote]

I would suggest you cut the power and attach that ground up.

Cheers

 

[celtic_dude]

Thanks for the all the input. I got the ground hooked up and am getting the correct readings now on the receptacles. Not going to try the elements till tomorrow since it is getting late. Thankfully I found the ground issue before anything worse happened!

 

[celtic_dude]

One more quick ? I am having issues with the gfci now kicking in when the panel is plugged in. It may be the socket but I am wondering if neutral and ground should be showing connection when I do a continuity test?

 

[celtic_dude]

rewired socket and all good now. Running autotune now on pid

 

[ChocolateMaltyBalls]

If you have 4 wires running to the spa panel then the neutral and ground shouldn't be bonded anywhere except the main panel. If the GFI is tripping immediately that makes me think the neutral isn't wired right in the panel.

Edit: I guess you got it fixed, tell your brother no homebrew until AFTER the electrical work is done.