Ask What Up? What Up? Everybody? Welcome to another episode of Let's
Ask Paul, the podcast where I, Paul Abernathy, attempt to answer all
of your electrical questions submitted through the Paul Abernathy dot com portal. If you
haven't used it yet, it's a free service that's sponsored by Electrical Code Academy
Incorporated, and it's a online portal that allows you to submit questions to me
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folder so it doesn't get lost in my email, it doesn't get buried in
all of the BS. That's right, I said it. So look,
all you gotta do is go to Paul Abernathy. That's Paul ab er In
at h Y just like it sounds, Paul Abernathy dot com and you can
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system dot com. Fast track System dot Com. All right, well let's
go on and get into the night's episode. All right, So I have
a question. It was submitted to me and I'm going to read it.
It says, Hey, Paul, when we conduct a megaer installation test on
a four hundred and eighty volts system, and of course the wire is rated
six hundred volts. Is it safe to use the thousand volts setting or fifty
volts setting? And I think he means five hundred volt setting, it said,
thanks in advance. Okay, great question. Now, look, everybody
knows I have put out documents. I have been on different other shows and
I talk about MEG testing, and I explain that everybody forces you know,
engineers and everybody forces compliance and wanting to do MEG tests, and ultimately they're
going to go to some NITA standard. NITA standard basically you'll say one hundred
mega homes when you're dealing with wire, but you kind of remember that's really
medium voltage type of stuff where you really do have a return path on the
cable assembly. So let let me explain a little bit. So in MEG
testing, you know, you have a megameter and you're you're sending out a
certain level of voltage and you're trying to read back any linkage that you might
give through the maybe stressed out installation or damaged installation or just weak points in
it. I you know, could have been part of production just could have
been damaged during an installation. And you know, meging is fine, by
the way, MegaR or meging as typically you know, there's a company called
Meger who kind of pioneers a lot of this stuff. But you know it's
megameters and insulation resistance meters things like that. They really aren't as perfect as
everybody thinks they are. Think about it here, let's use a little logic
before I answer this question. Use a little logic. If if I'm going
to be testing a conductor's insulation, So I'm going to connect the lead to
the let's just say copper conductor, and I'm going to set it a certain
voltage, whether it's five hundred volts or a thousand volts, and I'm going
to put that through that And typically, by the way, the UL standards
for thermal set under forty four or thermoplastic under eighty three, typically they're doing
about five hundred volts. Okay. So anyway, so the thing about it
is, if you're everything is insulated, it's pretty hard to get any reliable
readings. Now, you could have some capacity, it's building up. Maybe
your unit discharges a new modern units do, some do not old crank style
do not, so you'd have to discharge it between tests. But the point
is, if everything is insulated, how in the world would you get a
real reliable return path to have anything that you can rely on. I mean,
think about it, What am I going to connect it to? Now?
If you have PVC raceway and all your conductors are insulated, and you
connect to one of the leads to one of the conductors, and now you
connect the other lead to another conductor, whether they're both insulated, the reality
is you're not going to get any readings unless they're both potentially bad or damaged
at the same area. Okay, and you probably could dude, is better
with just a continuity tester, unless, of course they're not touching than that
wouldn't do much good. But the point is to use a meger, you
have to what you put in. You got to get something back to the
meter. If it's all insulated, it's kind of pointless. Yeah, you're
gonna get some numbers. Okay, you're gonna get something. But is it
reliable or is it just make you feel warm and fuzzy when you see it?
That's probably what it is. It just makes you warm and fuzzy when
you see it. Now, people ask me all the time, what is
the lowest level in megs that you would actually accept? And you know what,
I think that when it comes to wire, anything that's over twenty is
probably going to be fine. Twenty megahomes don't always look for gigs, and
you couldn't have multiple conductors in a raceway in one be dramatically lower than the
other. That means absolutely nothing. That doesn't mean it's imminent failure. Okay.
So the NITA standard, for example, when it says one hundred megahmes
is not really germane to normal building wire. So at the end of the
day, I had conversations with manufacturers of these installation resistant meters and they basically
told me that their products weren't specifically designed for use with conductors that are all
insulated inside of some type of raceway that is insulated like a PVC. You're
not going to get really reliable readings. You're not. Now if you happen
to have a bare equipment ground in there for some reason and you're testing to
that, and yeah, you might get some readings if you have insulated conductors,
but you have a metal raceway of some sorts, then yeah, you
can get some realistic readings on that. But if everything is insulated, it's
just a crapshoot, to be honest with you. Now, people always ask
me about mccable, Can you use the meg tester to test for uh,
you know, insulation on an mccable, And reality is no, because the
polymeric material or the flame retarded paper that wraps around the whole assembly does not.
It takes a lot for that to get cross it. And testing that
I did a while back it was as much as four thousand and five thousand
volts. And some testing we did on some cables no metallic sheet cable,
and we tried to pump some through the bare equipment ground and do testing that
way, and it just was and we damaged some black and damage some white
at certain locations, but there was that paper separator. Normal testing wouldn't detect
anything, just acted like it was fine, and you knew it was damaged.
We know because we damaged it. Same thing with the mc cable,
since MC cable typically has a polymeric rap that wraps around all the conductors that
are in the assembly. Anything that we're to get out to the armor is
going to be pretty much not going to take place. And I know this
too because we did tests on this as well, damage the hell out of
some conductors, put them in the polymeric polymeric rap like normal, and then
put it back inside of the MC cable and then we just proceeded to flood
it and just could not get it to do anything. So M and we
also did um HI pot testing on that same concept we did. We has
obviously higher voltages and you know, in many cases more destructive. UM we
did testing on MC and we we had to crank that thing up again four
or five thousand just just and it would barely wouldn't wouldn't even make it through
the MC. It wouldn't work for the MC, and it ended up working
for the nomataller sheet cable. But the point is we went from an insulation
resistance test to a high pot test, being more destructive, looking for and
using a lot higher level of current, okay, high level of voltage and
everything associated with it. So at the end of the day, UM I
do have a paper out on it. If you're interested in it, you
can always email me at Paul dot Abernathy at uh fast track system dot com,
or you can just go to our website and used to contact us and
ask me for it. I'll send you a copy of it. And at
the end of the day, if everything is insulated, it's pretty hard to
get any real reliable readings. Let me just put it that way, okay.
And if you call them manufacturers of those machines and you ask them,
say, hey, I got an insulated raceway and I got insulated conductors,
Will your megameter? Will your meger work for me? And we're not talking
medium voltage where you have a center core, you have dielectric material, then
you have an outer braiding that's perfect for these machines. And if you fact,
if you go look at the megaer document stitching time, you'll notice that
it talks about a cable assemboly with a leadge sheathing on it, and it
shows you the setup, but it does not really show you how to do
that with like building wire in a PVC race way, because it's just not
what it's designed for. Yeah. Maybe again, maybe if it's rigid metal
intermediate metal EMT. Okay, you got a chance. There you go.
When everything's insulated, crapshoot. So stop. Also, people want to meg
all the time. When they throw conductors into the earth direct burial US DASH
two for example, and they want to stick one lead on a conductor and
then one lead into the earth and think they're going to get any real readings,
you're not, folks. The same reason we can't use the earth okay,
as an equipment ground, same reason we can't because there's way too much
impedance on it. It's the same reason you can't use the earth in order
to be able to use one of those type of meters. So then if
you're doing it out there, you're doing it to make you feel warm and
fuzzy or an engineers telling you to do it, and you just do it.
But reality is it's it's it's all bs. Now. Look, the
question asks, can you is it safe to put a thousand volts setting?
Yes, consider it's industry, it's okay whether it's five hundred volts or whether
it's a thousand volts. The only time you have to start worrying is whether
or not it's AC or DC. Okay, you seem more destructive. So,
but in general, thousand volts setting is perfectly fine. Even though the
conductors are rated six hundred volts. You're not going to be doing it long
enough that would cause any problems, right, and so again not that big
a deal when it comes to that again, higher voltages, but that's pretty
standard in the industry for us to test it at either thousand volts or five
hundred volts either one. Obviously, if you're using a thousand voltes you get
more pressure, so you really are going to be stressing out that, you
know, if there's any damage to the insulation, provided you have an adequate
return path back to the source. Right, Okay, so Layman's without going
too deep on that, I'll just answer your question. Yes, it's perfectly
fine to use a thousand volts setting on your meg, your Mega or your
five hundred volte setting, either one is perfectly going to be fine with six
hundred volt rating conductors not going to be a problem, all right. It's
not enough duration, it's not long enough right to cause any real stress on
that insulation, unless, of course, there's something wrong with it. There
you go, Okay, all right, hopefully I answered that question and gave
you a little additional insight to that. Again, if you have any questions,
all you gotta do, let's go to Paul Apernanti dot com and send
them. I'll do my best to give you the information that I can give
you. Okay, until next time, folks, stay safe, God bless,
and again, remember we're going live June twenty eighth, twenty twenty three.
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folks, till next time, Stay safe, God bless and remember send your
questions Paul Abernathy dot com. Ask Ask Ask