Looking at my lighting earlier and see that my multimeter is measuring 230v from live to neutral at the ceiling light, but only70 ish volts from live to earth. Am I right in thinking the earth may be disconnected somewhere and the 70ish volts im reading is due to capacitance ? I cannot get my head round why its like this The live is definately at 230v so if the earth was disconnected I should not be getting any reading atall. Where is this 70v reading from ???? and between what ?? I need to check the continuity of the earth tomorrow but it cannot be continuous or i would be getting 230v, even a loose earth connection would still read full voltage would it not ??
Others will follow with more info I`m sure so this is just the first thing to consider.
Yes you can pick up stray capacitance (and inductance and indeed leaky resistance) on most modern multimeters because their imput impedance is usually around 10 Megohms which makes then accurate because they do not load the circuit. Any such stray pick up will substantially stay there and not collapse.
If you were to put a load across the terminals (a resistor or a lamp) you would see if this voltage collapses. Yes it does sound like you`ve probably got an earth connection adrift.
Others will follow with more info I`m sure so this is just the first thing to consider.
Yes you can pick up stray capacitance (and inductance and indeed leaky resistance) on most modern multimeters because their imput impedance is usually around 10 Megohms which makes then accurate because they do not load the circuit. Any such stray pick up will substantially stay there and not collapse.
If you were to put a load across the terminals (a resistor or a lamp) you would see if this voltage collapses. Yes it does sound like you`ve probably got an earth connection adrift.
