My son has a mobile home which is an older home. All of the sockets are three prong and all are grounded.
His son went out to close the gate and was shocked. Dad does it and nothing happened. Last night his son closed the gate and again was shocked. Dad checks it and notices as the gate latch drops it sparks. He lifts it again and as he lowers it there is again sparks.
He thinks it may be a problem in his mobile home.
This morning (with the main pulled and sub breaker off) we ran a continuity check for the neutral and the ground coming from the sub panel to the main. Both show continuity, which makes it appear that both are good (we did disconnect them from the sub panel and tested each one separately). We also checked the ground from main to ground and it is fine. All lugs are tight and ground from sub to frame of trailer is good. One fence post does touch the home. No breakers are tripping and no lights brighter than others everything appears normal other than the spark and shock at fence.
What other steps can we take to isolate the problem other than turning off one breaker at a time and testing?
We have considered that the problem may be coming from another home as the back chain link fences are tied to corners from one to the other.
I am fairly good with electricity but age is catching up and am forgeting a lot of troubleshooting ideas.
Best Answer
Thanks for the answers and the offers of help I had to give up Our number three son came running and was able to isolate and find the problem.
He found that even though the ground lug looked good and actually showed good when testing it was actually broken. The bolt that pushes aganist the ground rod was broken completely into. They purchased a new ground clamp and installed it. He then ran test again and had 0 volts on the metal side of the house and 6 volts on the frame. This was way better than the 97 volts that was on the side.
After a second test he had 2 volts on the frame which they believe is a couple of bad outlets They are changing them out today . I am concerned about 2 volts but using a Fluke meter may be static volts or something Just a good lesson that proves putting good eyes on equipment can be better than testing and taking for granted it is good He found the problem by two means. One was actually looking at the ground and associated parts and second actually taking apart to make sure he was getting a good ground at the start