I only asked for one gift this year from all the family (wife, in-laws, kids). I wanted a 42" LCD TV. The Sony CRT was starting to act a little strange at times, and with a new furniture arrangement in the living room, the TV and entertainment center needed replacing.
So, after the kids destroyed our living room with unwrapping the gifts, we go to the in-laws for part deux. More wrapping paper flies through the air, lots of screaming (the good kind), and then, I finally get my TV.
I'm very happy and thankful for what I got. Aside from a bag of mixed nuts in the shells, and some candy in the stocking, this was my only gift. I was very anxious to get it hooked up in my living room, and the kids wanted to play video games on it, so we load it up in the minivan and drive all the way back to next door (FYI: the in-laws are my next door neighbors).
I got the old TV out of the entertainment center, and then relocated the old center as well. We temporarily place the new TV on another piece of furniture. I hook up all the devices (dvd-vcr combo, cable box, Wii), plug them into a power strip/surge protector and then go to connect the cable lead from the wall to the cable box.
Holy ****!!! I drop the wire and jump back. That thing shocked the fire out of me. I attempt again, and with the second shock, I'm now the brightest bulb in the room. SWMBO and I tried several different ways of hooking things up, and we either trip the breaker or I get shocked! One of the times we tried, we were going to connect the cable wire to the outlet in the wall last. It arced! SWMBO was holding the wire when it happened. Good thing she was wearing her brown pants.
Mine were yellow by this point. 
After about the 4th or 5th time, I've decided I don't want to watch TV. I now have a raging headache, and the kids want to know why Daddy can't get the Wii hooked up (it was their big gift). I decide to forgo the cable, and hooked up everything else. They were happy, I was still in a lot of pain and was foggy headed for the rest of the night. I did call the cable provider, and they sent a tech out Sunday morning.
The tech and I worked on things for over 2 hours. No matter what we did, things weren't looking right. We even disconnected the house from all cable/phone/internet (bundled package) with the same results. His answer...call an electrician. I agreed. I pulled all the phone and cable in the house, and I knew that other than the ground wire outside, the two were not connected at all.
I called a local electrician that the in-laws use. Since we rent the house from the in-laws, I wanted to use who they use and trust. Within 4 hours of calling, the electrician was on site.
He was baffled at first as well. We pulled the cover off the breaker panel for that part of the house. We pulled outlets from the room that I had remodeled. He fixed a couple of minor issues with how I had added outlets. Nothing major, just not the way he liked it. His way was better. After about 2 hours, he couldn't figure out what was going on, except that the leads on the outlet in the living room were backwards. So, he pulled the outlet.
This is where things get interesting. The wiring in the original part of the house is cloth insulated. The insulation around the hot leg had deteriorated to the point that it had fallen off the wire. With the box being a metal box, and the fact that the plug has a ground, but there is no ground from the outlet to the panel/outside, I was getting 125V coming down the ground wire of the surge protectors (tried more than one), and when we would try to hook up the cable, which is grounded, I guess you could say I completed the ground.
The electrician fixed the outlet for us. He taped up the inside of the box, fixed the insulation on the wiring, and corrected the reversed hot/neutral. He also recommended to the in-laws that we have a whole house electrical inspection done to see what else is failing and not up to code. Since the house was out in the country when originally built, the original builder (wife's grandfather) did all the work himself. We've fixed a lot over the years, but keep finding other problems. With all the money that's been spent on this house, it would have been cheaper/better to bulldoze and rebuild, but there's a lot of sentimental reasons to keep it.
End result of my experience: I can watch my new TV with cable, if I ever get the kids off the Wii, and my FIL now knows that the house needs a lot of electrical work. I've been telling him for years that it needs rewiring, but he hasn't taken me serious...until now. We will soon have the inspection done, and I'm interested in what they say.
We figure that my unplugging the old stuff and plugging in the new probably was the final straw for that outlet and the vibrations from stuff getting moved is what caused the insulation to fall off and allow the contact with the box.
I hope you guys also had a shocking Christmas, just not the way I had.
So, after the kids destroyed our living room with unwrapping the gifts, we go to the in-laws for part deux. More wrapping paper flies through the air, lots of screaming (the good kind), and then, I finally get my TV.
I'm very happy and thankful for what I got. Aside from a bag of mixed nuts in the shells, and some candy in the stocking, this was my only gift. I was very anxious to get it hooked up in my living room, and the kids wanted to play video games on it, so we load it up in the minivan and drive all the way back to next door (FYI: the in-laws are my next door neighbors).
I got the old TV out of the entertainment center, and then relocated the old center as well. We temporarily place the new TV on another piece of furniture. I hook up all the devices (dvd-vcr combo, cable box, Wii), plug them into a power strip/surge protector and then go to connect the cable lead from the wall to the cable box.
Holy ****!!! I drop the wire and jump back. That thing shocked the fire out of me. I attempt again, and with the second shock, I'm now the brightest bulb in the room. SWMBO and I tried several different ways of hooking things up, and we either trip the breaker or I get shocked! One of the times we tried, we were going to connect the cable wire to the outlet in the wall last. It arced! SWMBO was holding the wire when it happened. Good thing she was wearing her brown pants.
Mine were yellow by this point. After about the 4th or 5th time, I've decided I don't want to watch TV. I now have a raging headache, and the kids want to know why Daddy can't get the Wii hooked up (it was their big gift). I decide to forgo the cable, and hooked up everything else. They were happy, I was still in a lot of pain and was foggy headed for the rest of the night. I did call the cable provider, and they sent a tech out Sunday morning.
The tech and I worked on things for over 2 hours. No matter what we did, things weren't looking right. We even disconnected the house from all cable/phone/internet (bundled package) with the same results. His answer...call an electrician. I agreed. I pulled all the phone and cable in the house, and I knew that other than the ground wire outside, the two were not connected at all.
I called a local electrician that the in-laws use. Since we rent the house from the in-laws, I wanted to use who they use and trust. Within 4 hours of calling, the electrician was on site.
He was baffled at first as well. We pulled the cover off the breaker panel for that part of the house. We pulled outlets from the room that I had remodeled. He fixed a couple of minor issues with how I had added outlets. Nothing major, just not the way he liked it. His way was better. After about 2 hours, he couldn't figure out what was going on, except that the leads on the outlet in the living room were backwards. So, he pulled the outlet.
This is where things get interesting. The wiring in the original part of the house is cloth insulated. The insulation around the hot leg had deteriorated to the point that it had fallen off the wire. With the box being a metal box, and the fact that the plug has a ground, but there is no ground from the outlet to the panel/outside, I was getting 125V coming down the ground wire of the surge protectors (tried more than one), and when we would try to hook up the cable, which is grounded, I guess you could say I completed the ground.
The electrician fixed the outlet for us. He taped up the inside of the box, fixed the insulation on the wiring, and corrected the reversed hot/neutral. He also recommended to the in-laws that we have a whole house electrical inspection done to see what else is failing and not up to code. Since the house was out in the country when originally built, the original builder (wife's grandfather) did all the work himself. We've fixed a lot over the years, but keep finding other problems. With all the money that's been spent on this house, it would have been cheaper/better to bulldoze and rebuild, but there's a lot of sentimental reasons to keep it.
End result of my experience: I can watch my new TV with cable, if I ever get the kids off the Wii, and my FIL now knows that the house needs a lot of electrical work. I've been telling him for years that it needs rewiring, but he hasn't taken me serious...until now. We will soon have the inspection done, and I'm interested in what they say.
We figure that my unplugging the old stuff and plugging in the new probably was the final straw for that outlet and the vibrations from stuff getting moved is what caused the insulation to fall off and allow the contact with the box.
I hope you guys also had a shocking Christmas, just not the way I had.
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