DCAudioDIY.com

You want to hear crazy? I was speaking to an electrician in an older section of PA who said they used to use the ground as a neutral. No, that is not bonding the neutral and ground at the box, but actually using the ground as the second current carrying wire. That is as bad as the common practice among boneheads that have a backup generator and feed it into a dryer outlet, using the ground at the three wire socket as the neutral for the 120 volt circuits. And to add salt to the wounds they have no transfer switch and try to remember to trip off the main service disconnect.

_________________
Walt

_________________
Walt

Here is the spec for "breakers" in my new house under construction. As you mentioned they are arc fault interrupters that look for high frequencies on the line caused by arcing.

_________________
Walt

I spoke to a couple of electricians who said certain appliances like vacuum cleaners drive the arc fault suppressors crazy. One of the electricians said when working on new construction where contractors are using saws with electric brakes, he installs regular breakers while they are working or the interrupters would trip repeatedly when they stop the saws. When they are finished he goes back and replaces the standard breakers with interrupters. They are another case of good ideas with unforeseen consequences.

_________________
Walt

I just experienced this with our recent remodel. Had to clean the vac motor and install new brushes, which improved it 90%, but there's still a circuit we have to avoid using. It's definitely the vacuum too. I can plug in my shop vac or any other tool into that circuit without a problem. Plug in the house vacuum and it trips.

As Tom said, a real good idea that just came up a little short.

Tom, I feel your mental anguish!

There is no licensing for electricians or electrical contractors in PA. I figured there was reciprocity with MD, so contacted PA about getting my masters there. Nope, nothing! Good luck, since my casual observations of new builds in my area of PA show real deficiencies, not just nit-picking.

Yeah, we detest arc-fault breakers, both series and shunt type cause unwanted nuisance tripping and play havoc with some older installations. Some AHJ are demanding AFCI be installed on all circuits when a heavy-up is performed. That's not a NEC requirement, but it is their prerogative.

Using a grounding/bonding conductor or means (enclosures and raceways) is colloquially called "bootleg neutral". Really stupid and dangerous practice. There is obviously a voltage "drop" across a current-carrying conductor, such as a "grounded wire" AKA Neutral. Grounding means (the green wire) are by definition to be AT ground potential. The use of the "ground" as a neutral raises its potential to above ground, sometimes substantially so! So, if Harry or Harriet Homeowner gets between a real grounded terminal like a faucet and a clothes dryer which has an enclosure at a few volts above ground, we get to read about it in the paper, on occasion.

In the special case of 120/240 volt clothes dryers, that actually used to be allowed until 1990 or so (I forget). Many older dryers have a 3-wire connection, where neutral and ground are a shared connection. This was ONLY ever allowed in the special case of single family homes and connected to the main electric panel (where neutral and ground are connected), not a subpanel (where neutral and grounds are separated). I guess the judgement was that the only neutral loads in the dryer are controls and the tumbler motor. Yup, we see these ALL the time in apartment buildings, commercial spaces and just about everywhere else. We get the call, customer has a new dryer and cord, needs a receptacle. We will not hook it up without providing a 4-wire cord. It's Code and it's ignored.

Thank goodness that G-d looks out for us; we seem to have zero respect for something in our homes that can kill us.

Most of the three conductor 240 outlets I have seen on dryers, ranges, etc are L1, L2, and ground with no neutral as they don't need 120 volts. On the other hand you can get regulatory agencies that go overboard. We had a graphic arts pulsed xenon lighting system that operated on 240 volts and inside was an autoformer with taps to select the appropriate setting for either 208 or 240. It also had a 120 volt tap to run fans in the lights. It had a 3 wire connection as there was no need for a neutral seeing that everything came off the autoformer. It got UL approval but when we submitted it to the City of LA for their approval they rejected it because there was no neutral and the fans were 120 volts. We tried to explain to them that the 120 volts was not derived from a neutral connection but rather the autoformer. They still would not listen. So, we installed a 4 wire cord and plug but only used 3 wires inside. They approved it.