Getting Electrocuted...

Just discovered an odd problem that I haven't run into before.

Was checking on my stuff, and to guage the heat of the hood I reached out and put my hand on it...

And I felt a strange sensation - at seemingly random intervals I get a minor shock (it feels kinda like a carpet shock). It delivers a shock once or twice a second I would say.

Anybody ever ran into this before? The ballast and hood are both PL Light systems.

I'm assuming that electricity is jumping to the hood where the mogul base enters the hood.

Anyone think this is dangerous? From my understanding the power delivered to the lamp is high voltage but very low amperage. I only have a week or two left before I finish and plan on replacing the hood then.

Thanks for you input.

i would be scared of it. i ran into a problem like that at work with a piece of equipment, would shock the piss out of you sometimes. ended up being a bad plug and wiring but where the wire was inside of the wall was all burned up. could of caused one hell of a fire.

Something in your light system is shorting out, or your ballast is not grounded properly and is building up a charge inside itself and/or on the hood. Yes, this can be very dangerous because right now you may only be receiving a minor shock which most likely is because you're simply wearing shoes. If you were, say, touching the screw in the cover plate that covers an electrical wall socket while you touched your hood you might get a more than fatal shock. Granted they do not pull that many amps, it only takes .01 to .02 amps to kill you. That's one thousandth of an amp which is not much at all.

The thing with electricity is it follows the path of least resistance and when you touch your hood and you are not grounded to anything it is still easier for the electricity to follow the wires to the lamp. If you grounded yourself and then touched the hood the easiest path is up your arm, across your chest and through your heart and out the other arm. In the process, stopping your heart. This is not meant to scare you, but it is something you DO NOT want to mess around with if you don't know what you're doing.

There's also the chance of an electrical fire.

Keep a close eye on it and whenever you are done with your grow make sure you figure out what's shorting out and replace it.