Current from ground of socket

what if you take your bowl of saltwater and a conductive wire and connect it directly to the ground rod, if you'll still feel the electricity?

 

Good idea. I will try this if I can. we were looking for the ground rod and could not find it. We dug for a while, we followed the wiring into the ground, but it seems that the rod has really rotted away. we have to dig some more to put in the new one so maybe we will find the old one deeper down.
i had the electrician test for voltage in the water but got a very small decimal reading. could this be because he used the ground in the socket, that was not actually at zero, so it gave a false reading. Those things read the difference between the ground and the water right?

 

Does the wiring in your house actually have a ground wire or does it only have two wires, hot and neutral?

A lot of times in older homes with no ground wire a grounded three-prong receptacle will be installed with the ground terminal connected to the neutral wire. This is NOT the proper way to do this, will still show the recep is grounded on the tester, and can cause unbalanced current in the neutral to be present in the ground terminal of the three-prong receptacle.

The proper way to address this problem is to install a quality GFCI protected receptacle. If your wiring does not include a ground wire, DO NOT connect anything to the ground terminal on the GFCI.

 

I just spoke to my uncle who was the contractor for the house. he said that all the outlets were grounded off and that maybe the wires in the outlets need to be switched. he is trying to get into contact with the electrician who wired the house to make sure.I will let the electrician open up a socket and check when he comes back on Tuesday.

Would using a GFCI with my three prong pump and lights without a ground cause any problems, like damage to the items?

This problem is most likely for the whole house so it still needs needs to be fixed, can't just fix the outlet by the aquarium

thanks to everyone for all the input on this thread, i don't feel as lost and I'm starting to see a solution to this.
more info is very welcome.

 

very interesting problem... I hope you figure it out...

If you're going to install a ground rod outside the house, go ahead and install two, the two will give you an even better ground, especially for RF signal rejection.

 

If it is wired with three wires (hot, neutral, ground) then other possibilities include a neutral/ground swap or incorrect bonding of the neutral and ground wires, both of which are undetectable using a standard receptacle testing device and can cause various and apparently random issues.

gabbagabbawill, you may find this article of interest:

NEUTRAL GROUND

 

Interesting is definitely not the word i would use.;D
I was thinking about putting in another rod but kinda far away from the first one, then using it for the aquarium only. thanks

 

i guess the only to check these things will be to open up the socket. I'll tell tell the electrician to look out for these things. Is it likely that this would be the case for more than one socket, b/c i tried another socket and got the same problem. what i mean is does this happen by error or by ignorance?
thanks