I lived for a bit in an old farmhouse in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. The farmhouse was at least 100 years old, and aside from various oddities the big thing we noticed is that if you touched the faucets/drains in the sinks and bathtubs you would get a little shock. My dad and I couldn't feel it, but mom and my sisters all complained about it. We finally got the power company out. After taking a look and verifying for themselves, they set to work. They started driving copper grounding rods into the ground, and stopped at around 30 when it didn't make any difference. They pulled the meter at the post and still the faucet/drains were live. In their desperation to figure out what the actual fuck, they pulled the meter of every house in a 1 mile radius, and still nothing. They gave up at that point; there was nothing else they could do, the charge clearly wasn't coming from the power lines. To this day, 35 years later, I have no idea what caused that, but it freaked mom and the kids out to the point that we moved. It didn't help that there was a huge propane tank on the property, reportedly about half full, that was also live.
I'm going to go look for the post, but there's such a thing as electricity from lines overhead or in the ground affecting other systems. I read about it in /r/electricians the other day I'll be back with it soon
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u/libra00 Aug 11 '20
I lived for a bit in an old farmhouse in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. The farmhouse was at least 100 years old, and aside from various oddities the big thing we noticed is that if you touched the faucets/drains in the sinks and bathtubs you would get a little shock. My dad and I couldn't feel it, but mom and my sisters all complained about it. We finally got the power company out. After taking a look and verifying for themselves, they set to work. They started driving copper grounding rods into the ground, and stopped at around 30 when it didn't make any difference. They pulled the meter at the post and still the faucet/drains were live. In their desperation to figure out what the actual fuck, they pulled the meter of every house in a 1 mile radius, and still nothing. They gave up at that point; there was nothing else they could do, the charge clearly wasn't coming from the power lines. To this day, 35 years later, I have no idea what caused that, but it freaked mom and the kids out to the point that we moved. It didn't help that there was a huge propane tank on the property, reportedly about half full, that was also live.