I've been moved in to my new apartment for a couple weeks now, and one of the things that has confused me and my roommates for the longest time was a lightswitch that would occasionally give the user a shock on the way in. The first two times it happened, we figured it was a fluke, static electricity or something. It only got my single roommate those first two times; perhaps something he was doing that night got him really static-ey or something.
That was until about 4 days later, when both me and my boyfriend got shocked opening the door on the same night. The conditions were the same for all three victims. We walked into the dark bathroom, lazily flicked the light on, and got a shock up to around our wrist, maybe even a bit through our forearm.
We knew we had a problem that we needed maintenance for.
Our complex has free maintenance available on any weekday, but we couldn't have them over just yet. For the first week and a half of our time here, we had some friends crashing at our place with their cats. As broke college kids, we figured we could keep the cats under enough of a wrap to avoid paying a pet deposit. Because we had cats in the apartment that we weren't technically supposed to, it sounded like a bad idea to have anyone who works in an official capacity for our complex in the unit.
So we waited the week out.
My roommate found a technique that seemed to always keep the shocks away. If we grabbed the switch by the very end and flipped it without touching the board we wouldn't get shocked. From this I figured the problem must have been something on the base of the switch. Investigating closer, I couldn't manage to feel a shock from touching any individual part of the back of the switch. Nothing from the screws, nothing from the little gaps on the switch itself, hell even palming the thing did nothing. I flipped the switch on and off for several minutes before giving up.
During this wait, we still got careless some days, getting shocked by that switch from time to time.
When the friends moved out with the cats, we finally put in the request for maintenance. Of course, we couldn't demonstrate the shock in person, but the maintenance person had an idea of what the problem was. This sometimes happens in the apartments here and the solution is usually to wrap the wires in the switch with electrical tape. He did that and we couldn't demonstrate any more danger so he left.
And yet, a few days later my roommate got a shock far worse than ever before. This one made its way up his arm in the middle of the night, contracting his muscles just right to keep his thumb on the switch. I also got a shock that crawled up to my forearm the morning after my roommate's incident.
We had another visit scheduled the next day for another guy to come in and replace some bad outlets around here, but he never showed. Since this problem seemed to be getting more dangerous, we called the 24 hour emergency line and had someone come over to take another look. Together we narrowed the problem down to the screws on the switch, but couldn't find a solution. He put some electrical tape over it and said that somone who is better at solving electrical problems would be over the next day.
I did some more experimentation this morning. Yesterday it took the maintenance person taking off their shoe for the shock to even register, so I payed more attention to my feet this time. Standing right in front of the switch, on the tile, I could feel a slight constant "electric" feeling touching the bottom screw. I put my feet on the metal divider separating the carpeted living room from the tiled bathroom, and suddenly got the crazy jolt that we all felt before when I touched the bottom screw. Same for standing on the metal and touching the top screw.
I know the basics of electricity, but not nearly enough to figure out exactly whats happening here. Even replacing the metal box for the lights with plastic didn't solve it so I don't know what could possibly be delivering this shock. The maintenance people said they didn't see any signs of tear on the wires. I don't dare trying this same experiment with one hand on the screw and the other on the doorknob, but I don't really get how I haven't had any truly bad effects if the circuit being created is from my hand to my foot. Our hearts still all work fine.
If any of you guys have ideas, please let me know. I was able to finally give the maintenance person a consistant way to reproduce the problem, but not even he knows what's up.
Email: giantnoah@gmail.com
Matrix: @nehrman:matrix.org
Thanks!
-Flatbrad