tomp wrote:
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.
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.