Electrical Mystery of the Day

[Ed Griner]

Dan, You may want to contact your power company and have them check the their terminations at the pole and the service connection on the house.
Good Luck/Ed

[Dan Mages]

Regarding the connection to the grid. The power cables are burried from the back yard pole to the house. The power is grounded at the meter and twice at the water meter (redundant backups).

Dan

[ray hampton]

Yes, but wire nuts are not designed to be left out in the open, conduit is and if your argument is that copper ground wire might tarnish, so would the black and white rendering the circuit useless and ripe for repair anyway. In most places I've seen conduit, it's used as a basement clothes hanger, cord drape and fork lift backstop. Broken, split, rusted and mangled conduit can still be part of a safe system only if there is a green coated copper wire along side the black and white.

PVC conduit meets code because three wires are pulled.
.

you got a good point except for one thing ,---my post never mention the ground wire or the black wire either

[John alder]

It could be a ground fault outlet is in that circuit and is hooked up wrong and was tripped and they reset it without realizing it while trying to find the problem.Some of the older ones have a very small reset button that can be over looked.