differences in the quality of the heater construction/care taken in manufacturing it properly.
@skyy, I think your heater must have changed. I may not be an electrical guru, but I am not unskilled either. An isolated heater (no ground connection) should not be able to trip a GFCI. The GFCI works by detecting an imbalance in the current going out the hot lead, and less coming back in the neutral lead. The presumption is that the âmissingâ current must be getting conducted to ground (i.e. ground fault) by something like a human or equine body. Each time a horse gets shocked, the GFCI should trip.
Old topic, but something that doesnât seem to be going anywhere, so here is my story:
I have been dealing with stray voltage this year ever since I plugged in my tank de-icer (Rubbermaid tank with de-icer that runs through the drain hole in the bottom of the tank). I noticed that the tank was not being drank from, and I have a shallow spring in one of my pastures that has a lot of foot traffic around it. I have had the same set up for over 30 years and have never had a problem until now.
A multimeter (very sensitive voltage tester) showed 0.45 volts when I tested the water in the tank. It doesnât seem like much, but it sure does to my horses! Touching the water myself didnât produce an effect on me, but I was wearing rubber boots. I didnât want to try it barefooted.
I poured over Google searches on how to fix the problem, and the only thing I could find was to drive a ground rod into the ground near the tank and then run 8 aug copper wire from the ground rod, over the edge of the tank, and run the rest of the length of copper wire down through the water tank and weigh it down with a brick. I did that, and it did reduce the voltage in the water to a degree, but it was still showing 0.325 volts.
So I set up another tank with a de-icer in another pasture on the other side of the barn. Brand new tank, brand new de-icer, brand new 25â outdoor-rated extension cord. To my dismay, the new tank registered 0.9 volts as well as 3 amps!! YIKES!!
I had our power companyâs agricultural electrical engineer come out to look for stray voltage. He could not find any from their end where power comes in at the pole. We played around a bit with breakers and such and found that if I kept BOTH tanks plugged in, it would try to even out the voltage, and both tanks would average 0.3 volts. But that still wasnât good enough for me. Horses and donkeys still wouldnât drink from the tanks.
So, I took the newer tank that I had just set up and moved it way over into yet another pasture that was powered by a completely different grid. The initial power was coming from my momâs property, and I hauled it over to my own property. Got the tank set up, another brand new longer extension cord, filled the tank, and plugged it into a brand new outdoor GFI that is a dedicated line for my pool pump. It pulled 0.8 volts. UGH!!!
I went to Tractor Supply and purchased three items: A cage de-icer (the kind that hangs over the edge of the tank and rests on the bottom of the tank), a 16-gallon heated bucket (the kind where you can see the heating element at the bottom of the tub), and a flat-backed heated 24-qt. bucket (the kind where you cannot see the heating element because it is inside the walls of the bucket). the cage de-icer pulled 0.8 volts, the 24-qt. tub pulled 0.7 volts, and the flat-backed bucket pulled a full volt!! And this was from a completely different power source than the initial tanks!
Now what do I do??? We live in Michigan, and at some point the spring where my horses and donkeys have been drinking will eventually freeze over once we get hit with a polar vortex.
Back to the drawing board. I went back to Google. Page after page after page after page. New keywords, trying to find pages that addressed this issue that I havenât already read. Somewhere on page 12 of a Google search, I found a blog post. It said that to fix a stray voltage issue with tank de-icers, to use a 3 prong to 2 prong adapter with a ground eyelet, plug the de-icer into the adapter, the adapter into the GFI, and run a 12-gauge wire from the eyelet to the ground rod that I had already installed. I couldnât wait to try it!!
I went to Ace Hardware first thing in the morning, spent $1.69 on the adapter, and headed out to the water tank. Got it all hooked up, and now the moment of truth! ABSOLUTELY NO VOLTAGE!! The multimeter read 0.00 volts. I couldnât believe my eyes! Our power company ag engineer was scheduled to come out again that day to search further for stray voltage, and I told him what I did. He took his equipment out there and tested the water on the tank. NO VOLTAGE!! He loved the setup, took several pictures, and asked me to forward to him the blog post that I had found so that he can share the solution with other properties with similar issues.
Since then, I set my 2nd tank up with the same adapter, another newly installed ground rod, and again, NO VOLTAGE!
Here is a link to the blog that I found: http://blog.henrymilker.com/2014/10/âŠing-truth.html
Now, if anyone has any great ideas to convince my horses and donkeys to try out the tanks and drink from them, it would be most appreciated!
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