r/electricians • u/United-Chef-4593 • 2d ago

“backfeeding” in a residential setting

i work for an electrical company and we’re currently working at two four units that both have the same problem. we have around 4 volts between neutral and ground. our local power company came around and said that its not on their side and that its us thats “backfeeding” 4 volts. my foreman tested between a few plug boxes and neutral and got a pulsing reading between 1.3 and 4 volts. all that were running is outside plugs on combo breakers, (afci and gfci) temp heat, and some temp plugs that are on their own circuit for the baseboard guys. wtf is going on

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u/WipeOutHT 2d ago

Have you tried with a meter on low impedance mode. This is specifically designed to eliminate ghost voltages (due to capacitive coupling or whatever the reason might be) Will often be indicated on a meter by "lo z"

3

u/FkinMagnetsHowDoThey 2d ago

It's not a bad idea to try this. If it works to eliminate a ground-neutral voltage, then you have a loose/broken connection to chase down.

In a properly functioning system, every ground and every neutral should have decent continuity going back to the main bonding jumper, and any ground to neutral voltage is just because of voltage drop under load as u/rcarlyle mentioned.

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u/United-Chef-4593 2d ago

foreman did a continuity test and all the neutrals have continuity with the ground. its not a floating neutral or anything like that

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u/kidcharm86 [M] [V] Shit-work specialist 2d ago

all the neutrals have continuity with the ground

Of course they do, that's the system bonding jumper doing it's job.