ground, neutral, and hot wire are all "hot"

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tchestman88

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All wires connecting to the outlet have power going through them. Any advice on why this is occurring and what I could do about it?
 
It's likely that the end recep. of the circuit is powering something, so, shut the breaker off and unplug everything on the circuit, and switch everything on the circuit off, then reenergize the circuit. Then, if the symptom remains, you have something erroneously connected, so then it become a process of elimination.
 
tchestman88 said:
All wires connecting to the outlet have power going through them. Any advice on why this is occurring and what I could do about it?
Click to expand...
Can you please be a bit more detailed.
When you say all wires connected to the outlet/receptacle have power how did you check for power? Did you use a meter or a non-contact tester. If it is a non-contact tester this method should not be used for determining power at each individual wire in the receptacle. The tester will pick up power that is nearby to it also; such that if only the hot wire is hot the detector may/will indicate that the neutral and ground are also hot because it is reading the power from the hot wire nearby.
To properly test for power at the receptacle you should be using a meter. For a home owner I would suggest that you have on hand an analogue meter and not a digital. Analogue meter will help eliminate "phantom voltage" readings which may confuse you even more. Digital meters pick up phantom voltage which causes the home owner to think there is voltage when there is not.

If you tested with a meter what were the readings you got?
 
afjes_2016 said:
Can you please be a bit more detailed.
When you say all wires connected to the outlet/receptacle have power how did you check for power? Did you use a meter or a non-contact tester. If it is a non-contact tester this method should not be used for determining power at each individual wire in the receptacle. The tester will pick up power that is nearby to it also; such that if only the hot wire is hot the detector may/will indicate that the neutral and ground are also hot because it is reading the power from the hot wire nearby.
To properly test for power at the receptacle you should be using a meter. For a home owner I would suggest that you have on hand an analogue meter and not a digital. Analogue meter will help eliminate "phantom voltage" readings which may confuse you even more. Digital meters pick up phantom voltage which causes the home owner to think there is voltage when there is not.

If you tested with a meter what were the readings you got?
Click to expand...
Thank you for your help. I am using a non contact tester and a multimeter. The non contact tester show low voltage, around 1% going through each wire, the multimeter doesn't detect any voltage. So I'm assuming that the voltage is so low that the multimeter isn't able to detect it, but the non contact tester is lighting up and beeping with 1% on the indicator.
 
Both of the meters should read voltage, however there should be a reading on the multi-meter of 110-120+ Volts, which would indicate the hot conductor.
 
Snoonyb said:
Both of the meters should read voltage, however there should be a reading on the multi-meter of 110-120+ Volts, which would indicate the hot conductor.
Click to expand...
Thank you. The multimeter doesn't give any reading. I did test it on another outlet, and it does work. Not sure why the non contact indicator would be showing me a reading then.
 
I'll only use the proximity device to detect the presence of, but then use a multi, to define.
 
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