So we moved to our new house just before Thanksgiving, and one of the inspections revealed we have lots of water pressure, so it was recommended that we get some of these nice steel braided water lines, as they "last longer than regular rubber hoses" and are not prone to leaking, bursting, etc.  The package indicated a 2500lb burst pressure, so these things should be indestructible right?

Fast forward about 2 months, my wife calls me at work.  The new fancy water lines have a pinhole in them, and shooting water out.  I talk her through turning the valves to shut the water off.  Also during the conversation, she mentions the lights are flickering.  A phone call to neighbors later reveals they're not having the problem.  I get a new pair of hoses on the way home thinking it's caused by a higher than normal set water heater.  I replace the lines, reduce the temp on the water heater, so we should be good to go.

Side Note: If you buy a house and the water temp has been turned up above the default setting, it's probably an old water heater and you're probably looking at replacing it soon. The anode rod is probably gone, and the plastic inlet tube has probably deteriorated, which means water is entering midway up the tank or higher instead of at the bottom where it should be, causing you to say "man, it sure seems like we run out of hot water fast", but that is another story.  The default setting is still good enough that our showers are still hot even though the tank has a date of like 1991... 18 years from a 5 year warranty tank, nice job Kenmore!

Back to the story...

The new lines were installed on Friday.  Sunday evening, my son says there is water on the floor by the washer.  The new hoses have melted together again.  She only washed one load in it since installation of the new hoses, and we were gone all day, so that blows out the hot water theory.

My next thought was, hmm, if the metal braided hoses are getting hot where they're touching, there must be an electrical problem behind this.  I got my voltmeter out, touched one to the metal back of the washer, the other to the braided lines, wallah 4 volts! (should be zero, or near zero).  I go outside by the electric meter on the outside of the house, and hear arcing inside.. ok, not good.  We shut down almost everything in the house, lit some candles, I called the electric company.  They come out to find a bad ground wire. (hmm, we just got Direct TV and had to have them come back out because the microwave was causing 2 of the receivers to lose signal until they disconnected the ground wire).

So basically the house was trying to ground out through the washing machine, through the water lines touching the back of the washer to the water pipes.

Crazy eh?

This has been your home tip of the day.  Enjoy!