How to electrify a spouse and get away with it!

First off I want to say I am sorry for not blogging lately. I just fell out of the mood and couldn't get out of it. But cool air is coming back so I think I may just get back to old habits.


The heading of today's topic is meant to be a joke, but it also may drive reviews. It is meant to see if a catchy title will be reflected in my weekly stats about this website. Now onto the subject.

My wife just about met her "Waterloo" a week ago this Sunday when she went to step out of our sons camper. Son and I were in his house working on a floor when all of a sudden the Grand-kids came in and told us that GRANDMA WAS ON THE GROUND crying. When we got out there, we found her sitting up and Andrea was holding her. She was disoriented and such and was telling us not to touch the camper as it about killed her. After a quick looky-see to make sure she was Ok (or to say we took it under advisement) I went and unhooked the camper from the outlet and assisted her into the truck and we went home.

She didn't want to go to the ER room right then, but by Tuesday she agreed to go see a doctor. I guess the pain, plus the fact that her foot swelled up helped. Xrays showed she had a possible broken big toe and possible more, but the soft-tissue swelling was making it hard to tell. It's been a week and a day now and right now she is motoring around Wallmart in one of those electric carts getting bread and such. I can't go cause she thinks I would go around making funny motoring sounds and embarrass her. I told her that I didn't think I would do that, but it was a good idea. So here I am typing away instead of walking the halls of Wallmart.

After this all happened, I went out the next day and purchased a good OHM meter and drove back to the camper. I plugged it in, and held the tester to the door frame and grounded the system. Sure enough it demonstrated we had 120 volts at the frame and when I test the whole skin of the trailer I found the whole shell was "HOT". Mike and I started to look into what was wrong and tore everything apart in the camper. Every-time we did something our testing came back strange. We finally pulled the trailer up to the house on a whim to see how it tested there and everything test normal. So with hands scratching my head we focused on the barn and it's wiring.

For 3 afternoons I would drive over and continue testing. Everything we changed, changed something else. We would exchange ideas and finally Mike contacted some "True Electricians" and started testing against what they advised. Even with their info, nothing changed the original issue and we were stumped. When we applied power to the line both the ground and neutral would go hot or become charged. But when we went back to the point were we thought was a problem, the testing would test OK. I was stumped as we were facing something that I had never seen before.

Finally late Sunday afternoon we found the problem. What happened was when the shielded cable was pulled into the first box and clamped tight, The hot cable inside the shielding was somehow scuffed or damaged inside. We could NOT see it from the outside, but when I finally sliced it open it was plain as day. As soon as we put power to the system, the ground-wire also became hot. This then made everything on that circuit HOT to touch. Both Mike and I had always been on rubber-soled shoes so we never got a shock. But when Ruth stepped outside with her bare feet and wet grass, she took a solid full charge. Lucky for her, she fell away from the trailer and not back into it. If that would have happened, I doubt she would be racing around Wallmart today on that cute scooter.