Electrical shock from Receiver box???

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uboat is the man when it comes to this stuff.

It appears to me that D* is helping as much as they can, so I can understand your frustration, but I don't think canceling with D* is going to completely resolve your issue.
 
Hi "Uboat", thanks for the reply.
Let me explain the wiring in my house. As far as I know, none of the boxes are on a circuit with a GFI outlet (the only GFIs are in the two bathrooms which I believe have thier own breakers). But I will try to verify if one of the baths could possibly be on a same circuit. The basement I had finished 5 years ago, has no recievers in it. So that being said, do you still think it is the same problem? And do you think getting one of those prong adapter will temporarily fix the problem?

TIA,
Will
 
What you can do is shut the breaker off, remove the outlet and verify the correct wiring. Black wire (wires) to the gold screw, white wire (wires) to the silver screw and the bare wire to the green screw. If all that is ok, the you could go to the local hardware store and buy a cheap testing device that plugs into the outlet in question and displays neon lights to show correct/incorrect wiring. they work well for troubleshooting wiring issues.
Good luck and don't zap yourself again:)
 
In your earlier posts about getting a shock we recommended that you contact an electrician because you had a wiring problem. Now that you have FRIED 4 receivers get an electrician out and check your wiring. Of course you could wait until the house burns down, keep your homeowners insurance paid.
 
I think WalksInDarkness should not mess with his system at all, not until he has a licensed electrician fix the problem. Something is terribly wrong with his electrical wiring in his house. He should feel lucky he only fried a few Directv boxes, it could have been worse...
 
I am throwing in the towel...

Obviously, I know that there is a serious problem with my house. So I am calling some electricians, to see if I can get somebody out before Saturday. I am sure I don't have a chance in hell of getting anyone that soon. So that being said, should I reschedule my D* appointment on Saturday (until after I can get an electrician)? Or am I ok for a while by putting those 2 to 3 prong adapters on for a temporary fix? I really do not want to be without TV for 2 weeks, as I have 5 year old triplets who become posessed by the devil :dev when without TV for too long.

TIA,
Will
 
There is no need for multiple posts on the same topic. This thread will be merged with your original thread....I also suggest you follow the previous suggestions and get a qualified electrician out to check your wiring. The kind of things you are describing are not merely a result of you D* installation.
 
donna said:
next time they come out ask them if u have rg6 wire if not its rg59 which will definently cause this probelm especially when you have a multiswitch(splitter junction) they might have to rewire your house and you might have to pay if your outlets are on interior wallswhich should fix probelm ask the installer if he could run temp. line too see if that will fix before they rewire then youll know if it dosent work its probaly old wiring in house but my moneys on youve got rg59
Can someone explain what the difference between rg59 and rg6 is? There was one existing cable line (the one that was originally giving me the shocks), that the installers used. For some reason, they couldn't be bothered to run 10' more of cable (how obscenely lazy, they would not even had to drill any holes). Anyhow, my house is 50+ years old so maybe it is some old cable? How would I know?

TIA,
Will
 
WalksInDarkness said:
Obviously, I know that there is a serious problem with my house. So I am calling some electricians, to see if I can get somebody out before Saturday. I am sure I don't have a chance in hell of getting anyone that soon. So that being said, should I reschedule my D* appointment on Saturday (until after I can get an electrician)? Or am I ok for a while by putting those 2 to 3 prong adapters on for a temporary fix? I really do not want to be without TV for 2 weeks, as I have 5 year old triplets who become posessed by the devil :dev when without TV for too long.

TIA,
Will
Un-grounding the system and putting in the 2 prong adapters should get you going. But once the electrician comes through do as another poster suggested and get a circuit tester to make sure the outlets are wired correctly (the testers are usually yellow with 3 prong plug and have lights on it to tell you if the outlet is wired correctly and properly grounded, cost about $5-$10 and available in the electrical department of most hardware or home improvement stores). Only after you are sure the electrical problems are solved should you re-ground the DTV system and take the 2 prong adapters off the plugs.
 
Also, a licensed electrician should hopefully be able to also check and verify the coax cable. If it was something that the installers did (such as the RG59 for 10 feet) that caused the problem, you should be able to get the HSP to foot the bill for the electrician.

My brothers house is about 50 years old, and has (this is real scarry) cloth covered wiring. We were setting up his new plasma last week, and I saw that and I made him do an insulation crawl in his attic to put in a new line from his electrical panel (Keep in mind, I am in Phoenix, AZ - and he spent about 20 minutes in a 120+ degree attic)

I have also done some work on houses with older wiring many time before, and it always scares me, since after so many years, the wiring insulation has become so brittle, that it just falls apart when you touch it.
 
After reading all the way through this thread, I felt compelled to register and add my thoughts to the pile.

First of all, I'm going to preface all this by letting everyone know that I am in charge of tech training for a DirecTV HSP. While I cringe at some of the low opinions that most of you appear to have directed towards satellite installers, I also realize that the reputation wasn't earned for lack of good reasoning. I work with over 100 inhouse technicians and 15-20 contractors. Training uniformity, especially in an industry that has something along the lines of 30-40% turnover over 12 months, is a much more difficult prospect to achieve then it appears on the surface. There is no easy answer to all this. People decry the fact that techs appear to be incompetent, moronic, or both. I guess we could force all satellite installers to become low-voltage electricians- that would solve things real quick. Or perhaps college degrees? I don't think anyone would be able to afford those kinds of installs anymore- especially in the volume that DirecTV requires of us. This is not a complaint- it is what it is and I can see the merits on all sides of the debate. I take calls from customers with installer complaints and I know that there are some very real and serious customer service issues entering our customers' homes on a day-to-day basis. Anyways- enough of the speech; let's address the problems here...


Sorry to sound like a broken record, but hire a good licensed electrician.

First off, this is excellent advice. There are so many factors that could be causing this that I would not have continued any further without getting professional advice. At the bare minimum, buying cheap (<10$ in most cases) outlet testers would have been very prudent. Something as simple as a crossed polarity can cause symptoms exactly as you are describing.

And the first glaring problem was that there was absolutely no "ground" anywhere on the installation. So they grounded out the "splitter". Also, they said that the first guys put the wrong connectors on the cable (at the splitter junction), so they put on new ones that had some sort of plastic collar on it (does anyone know what these were?). The tech wasn't 100% sure if it would totally eliminate the problem, but he said it would make system safer. I haven't been able to reproduce the shock sine then, so I am hoping it is fixed.

- The original installer did not ground the multiswitch. This is definitely not good and runs counter to every policy we install by- although we've now discovered that grounding the system actually made things worse.

- The original installer left non-compliant connectors on the pre-existing cable he used for your install. These connectors could have been anything from (really bad) hex-crimped fittings to (probably harmless) cable-industry Digicon fittings.

- The fittings he replaced them sound like Thomas & Betts Snap-N-Seal fittings. To be clear, this wasn't the cause of your problem but the presence of non-compliant fittings may have created a problem for you in the future.

On a similar note: the day the techs came, one of my 4 receiver died. It would just stay stuck on the "Loading info" screen. I wonder if there was some sort of power surge on the cable when they were making the changes.

- My guess is that when they grounded the system, it shifted the electrical potential in your system enough that now all the transient voltage that builds up in the system was now going to that one box and going to ground through the wiring. The excess voltage in the box didn't allow anything less then 15-16 volts to get from the receiver to the switch. This means no odd transponders could be sent to the box. Most of the guide is sent out over transponder 1 (and some on 2 I believe)- hence the lockup. That is my theory, although reading uboatcmdr's theory presents an logical point of view that it could be blamed on the [lack of] presence of other receivers on the same circuit.

Regardless of whatever is to blame, when you replaced the box, the replacement shorted out; which at this point was completely predictable. Not that I advocate doing this, but unplugging the ground wire from the multiswitch would have probably returned the locked-up receiver to some sort of "working condition" (although the underlying electrical issues would have still been present and just as dangerous)

By the way, in my experience, the reason why the connector fell off was because the coax dieletric core melted and there was nothing to hold the connector on anymore! Yikes. The braiding touching the conductor could have been the thing that started the short in the first place, although my guess is that it was just a side affect from the cable cooking off.

Did all of the boxes get damaged by the first or second "shock" problem by some power surge type thing? (maybe, but why would the last box only stop working when it was unplugged for 10 minutes???).

A good question. Probably yes. I've seen several first-hand cases where one box 'cooking-off' caused all the others to fail as well. It does not take much excess voltage, however brief, to blow up a receivers' satellite input.

Shut off the breakers to all the outlets your current boxes are at. Undo the ground connecting the multiswitch. Purchase a couple of 2 prong adapters as uboatcmdr suggested and use those on all the remaining boxes. Turn the juice back on and see if the boxes start to boot back up. Let's see if the boxes can get past the start-up now. Please remember this is just a band-aid fix. Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, while installers are not supposed to use RG-59 (although over VERY short distances there is no material difference between 59 vs. 6's ability to convey signal and voltage), the presence of RG59 would not have caused this at all. My guess is that you have some combination of floating grounds and a hot ground (neutral & ground bonded at the panel). I really don't think any of your outlets are reverse wired (although I certainly wouldn't rule it out either) as you orig. described the shock occurring only when you touched something else, not when touching it alone.

Lastly, I would cancel you DirecTV service call until your wiring has been checked out. If a technician called me with the symptoms you describe and wanted my advice, I would tell them to advise the customer to get an electrician out asap. The likelihood of putting in multiple replacement receivers and all of them shorting out (thus requiring us to go out again) is extremely high. To that end, after the wiring issues get investigated and resolved, I would make sure that the technician replaces the multiswitch and lnb when he does come out. The chances of them failing in the immediate future is extremely high if they have done so already. I'd also get the number to the local installation company and deal with them directly instead of using DirecTV as the go-between. You'll probably get a faster turnaround response from them (we usually send our field supervisors out to take care of "specialized" service calls like yours) for starters and are more likely to get someone out who's had experience troubleshooting issues like this.


Good luck. I'm anxious to see how everything works out. :)


(BTW uboatcmdr, please don't think I intentionally meant to rip off some of your advice, I started typing this before I read through most of the 2nd page of this thread. ;) )
 
While uboatcmdr was probably correct about fixing the problem temporarily by disconnecting the groung so you can watch tv, DO NOT DO IT!!!!

If your house is now grounding through the satellite ground, it could arc when you disconnect it with lethal results!!!

DO NOT DISCONNECT ANYTHING. DO NOT SWITCH RECEIVERS.

HIRE A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN. DO NOT WAIT. GET A PROFESSIONAL THERE TODAY. THIS SITUATION COULD END WITH LETHAL RESULTS.

Eddie
 
More Updates...

OK, so I bought one of those BG testers from Lowes. First on "Uboats" advice, I looked at the ground. While I did not recieve a shock from it, IT HAD MELTED SPOTS all over it where it made contact with the plumbing!!! YIKES!!! After disconnecting that, I tested the outlet where the box totally fried, IT WAS REVERSE HOT/NEUTRAL WIRED!!! DOUBLE YIKES!!! Now to make things more interesting, that particular room is the only one that had a ground connection on the outlets. So, my loose theroy at the moment is that this whole problem is due to those facts, compounded by the later addition of the multiswitch ground. I am basing that on the fact that the STBs are one of the only things in my house that use a ground plug, and definitely the only things that are on one circuit (via the coax). And I am fairly sure about this, as the room with the reverse circuit is where the first box got weird and then the second box got totally fried. The only thing I can figure why one box just started acting odd and the other got toasted, is that the second was different model series with slightly different circuit design (just a theory).
Oh, and "BenJ", as for the connecter/coax question: no, it was not melted. It was purely very poor workmanship. This is one area that I am an expert in, as I am an engineer who works for a company that make an electrical product. Every day I have to deal with connector application quality issues. I am very familiar with what that area. The outer braid condctor was all bunched up, and making contact with the inner conductor, because the tech had severed the inner insulation layer.
Anyhow, I am still trying to get in touch with my electrician. But from everyone I have talked to, since I have already fixed the reverse polarity issue last night, there is not much more he can do other than replace all my wiring. Which is not going to happen, as all three levels of my house (basement/main/attic) are finished off with plaster.

Regards,
Will
 
PhillyOTA said:
What did the electrician do?
So far nothing. I have contacted 3 guys so far, not one will even call me back. I live in MA, where there is a tremendous building-boom going on, and the tradesmen are in thier "busy season" before the winter comes. That is made worse by all of our 100+ year old houses always needing repairs. So it is virtually impossible to get a liscensed tradesman to repsond, and when you do they usually can't come out for 3-4 Weeks. I went through this problem when my water heater blew, many plumbers had answering machine messages saying soemthing like "we are not booking any new business at this time". Luckily, I called in a favor through a carpenter who did a large $$$ job for me earlier (and he hooked me up with the plumber who subs out all of his jobs).
Yeah, my wiring is pretty much F#@&ed. I did a thorough investigation, some obvious things like the reverse ploarity wiring I fixed. At this point, the real issue is the lack of grounding in some plugs. My house has a fully finished basement and attic, so there is no easy way to run new wiring without cutting up the plaster. I don't have $10,000 to drop on that right now, nor will I any time soon. I figure th house has made it 50+ years so far, if it burns down I have insurance.
 
the neutral is being used to ground the house wire. This is not a good practice. They use to do this a long time ago. The neutral is just for unbalanced loads, it's somewhere for the electricty to go. In a 220 circuit it only has one place to go----> Ground. But in your house it might go to you if you touch the dryer. The house wiring is letting the electric company ground out your house. Unforntunity that can be a long run. The shorter the ground the better. If you are in a pinch you can ground to cold water pipes. This is a temp solution but, you need to buy a grounding rod and fix your house wiring. It's not a small problem but, It can be fixed my a DIY'r over a weekend if you feel you can handle it.
 
sort of...

PhillyOTA said:
Any news?
I am going to get flamed for this one for sure, but here goes:
!Disclaimer - DO NOT FOLLOW MY ADVICE!
As I wasn't having any luck getting any electricians to call me back (probably did not wan't to get involved in a messy situation), I decided to do what I could on my own. I spoke extensively with an electrical engineer at my work, he is very knowledgeable on the therory and also labored for an electrician in college. Also, I spoke with some electricians who do all the industrial wiring in our manufacturing plant (We are always running new circuits for equipment, but they don't work on private homes). And the consensus was that there is no easy fix. Some of the wiring is reverse polarity at a connection behind the wall, and some have old cable with no ground wire. Likely, it would require running all new cables on 2 out of 3 levels of my house. A very expensive proposition condsidiring all of the rooms plastered. Honestly, I don't have $10k to drop on such a project. After extensive questioning, we all were in agreement that the root cause of the problem was the one room that had reverse polarity, which was also the only room that was properly grounded (this was the cause of the first minor shocks I was experiencing). When the multiswitch was later grounded out, it made the situation much worse, and fried the box in the "reverse" room. Somehow that sent a surge down the coax and cooked the other 3 boxes that were ungrounded. So what was thier "off the record" solution... remove ALL forms of grounding, as polarity is somewhat irrelevant when there is no ground (if you stick a volt meter into a 2 prong outlet, you get the same reading no matter how you orient it). Yes, I know, this is not the safest thing to do. However, I live in a town where 75% of houses have antiquated wiring. If this were so incredibly hazardous, houses would be burning down and/or people would be getting electricuted every day. So after over one week of going "groundless", NO fried boxes and NO electrical shocks. I'll just be sure to keep the family in the dining room during lightning storms ;) no appliances in there.
 
I hate to add to this, but I've seen many houses where - unfortunately - completely ungrounding was the only solution.

It goes against everything that an installation technician is taught - but in some cases - like this one - it's the only option.

Good luck.

BTW - where are you from?
 
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