A friend of mine rents an older home in our town. The city is replacing all the old water meters with new ones that can be read remotely. The land-lord set it up so he would be home for the install. The old ones were all metal. The new one is mostly plastic. After they changed it, the furnace tried to kick on and some lights started to dim and it tripped two breakers. They did not know what to do so they put the old meter back in. He said the panel is newer and it does have a visible ground rod outside. There plan was to run a ground jumper around the new meter when re-installed. I say there are more issues than the grounding. I think there is a problem with the neutral.
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There is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
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About the only thing that can happen, if everything else is done correctly, without a grounding jumper for the water meter is that you end up with inside metal water piping that is no longer bonded and or missing GES. While a very serious safety issue, it by itself should not cause lights to flicker, furnace to turn on, and breakers to trip. Something definitely does not sound right.
Have a master electrician assess the issue and recommend a fix, if any is needed.
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Problems like these are often caused by a bad neutral. With the old metal water meter the neutral current was able to return on the pipe probably through the neighbors panel back to the transformer. Installing a bonding jumper around the meter will amount to a Band-aid approach, it might seem to solve the problem but the real issue needs to be identified and corrected. IMO you’re on the right track with a neutral issue.
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Yep. That’s it. This is a serious urgent issue. Had they realized they could have jumpered
between the metal pipes on either side of the plastic meter to verify (but NOT to FIX the issue).
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He is having Com-ed come out first to be sure everything from the pole to the meter is ok and then the electrician is coming over.
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Just for grins I would put a clip-on amp meter around the water pipe and see if there’s current.
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The current does not have a return path since the plastic meter interrupted the path.
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Alother issue is to disconnect any grounding to house water pipes that are metal. With the main pipes changed to plastic, any pipe grounding will have to carry current through the water in the pipes causing major electrolysis to the interior of the metal pipes. I inspected a home that had had the well pump swapped with plastic and the copper pipes in the house were all paper thin, crushable by hand. Many pinhole leaks were present until one finally burst, so beware! Ground rods are the way to go!
A metal water piping system is required by the NEC to be bonded to the service even if the supply piping is plastic and does not qualify as a grounding electrode. IMO no one should be suggesting that the bonding means be disconnected.
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Well water can have that effect regardless of bonding.
Update: The landlord had an electrician come out. (I know the electrician, I did an inspection for him) He did some voltage tests and determined the problem was on “Com Eds” side. Com Ed came back out and ended up replacing some wires and installed a new meter panel. The electrician also said the corrosion in the panel needs to be dealt with but the panel is obsolete and breakers are no longer available. Also there is a Sub-panel and the neutral and ground wires need to be separated. (No surprise there)
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Thanks for the update, Kenneth!..appreciate it. 