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Dirty Beluga posted:I'm having trouble understanding why ground is connected to neutral inside my electric panel. Neutral from the power company IS ground. They are the only people allowed to use the earth as a conductor. Neutral at the pole is literally connected to a ground rod. You bond them in one place and one place only (somewhere near the service entrance, typically in the main panel) because this separates YOUR ground from the neutral current return past the panel (your inside wiring). If they were connected elsewhere you could have "objectionable current" on your ground lindes, which in system design are NOT to be used for normal current carrying, they are a safety. In a sub panel in an outbuilding you do NOT bond the ground an neutral (doing so would create a dangerous situation). You run that panel ground bus to it's own grounding system near the building where it is installed.
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Sep 16, 2013 18:45
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Dirty Beluga posted:What is confusing me is, if the neutral and ground are connected together in the panel, doesn't it mean that electricity could back-feed up the ground line to the chassis of an appliance / plumbing/ etc? everything goes to the same bus bar. it seems like with this wiring both the ground and the neutral are the same thing. This would trip the breaker (and once the breaker is tripped, you definitely want some part of that circuit connected to ground somewhere).
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Sep 16, 2013 19:05
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My house does not have a grounding wire. I found this out last night when my TWC tech let me know. Because nobody else would. Grounding from the meter box, is that the power company's or am I going to have to get a rod and do it myself?
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Sep 17, 2013 20:09
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Gothmog1065 posted:My house does not have a grounding wire. I found this out last night when my TWC tech let me know. Because nobody else would. Are you sure you don't have a ground? It's just a likely to be on your water pipe as it is to be a copper rod or rods. What and where you must ground really depends on your service entrance, but you likely can't go wrong with a couple of 8 or 10 foot copper rods driven in 6 feet apart and bonded together, then attached to both the meter and your panel. You'll likely be the one responsible for all of that, including connection to the meter for which you'll likely need to get the power company involved. If your meter box is connected with EMT to the panel and not too far away it would probably be just fine to ground the panel only.
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Sep 17, 2013 20:34
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Bought a new construction house with a detached garage a few months back. Stupidly enough, they did not run power to the garage. So I would like to put it in. My plan was to run 4 #2 AL conductors from a 60A breaker in the main house panel out to a sub panel in the garage. However I realized my outside meter box is actually a meter combo box with a 200A disconnect and all 4 breaker spots unpopulated. (Eaton model MBT48B200BTS to be exact) Would I be OK to slap a 60A breaker in the outside box to feed the garage instead of feeding from the main house panel? The meter box is only 25ft from the garage so it would be a considerably easier and shorter path.
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Sep 17, 2013 21:01
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stevewm posted:Would I be OK to slap a 60A breaker in the outside box to feed the garage instead of feeding from the main house panel? The meter box is only 25ft from the garage so it would be a considerably easier and shorter path. What is your service rated at? If it's more than the combination of the breakers, sure you can do that. But if it's 200A service that's a big no-no.
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Sep 17, 2013 21:54
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Gothmog1065 posted:My house does not have a grounding wire. I found this out last night when my TWC tech let me know. Because nobody else would. There is a 95% chance the TWC tech is lazy/stupid/incompetent. Cable install techs are almost universally worthless.
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Sep 17, 2013 22:20
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Motronic posted:What is your service rated at? If it's more than the combination of the breakers, sure you can do that. But if it's 200A service that's a big no-no. 200A... The outside disconnect is a 200A breaker. The feed going to the main house panel is on the output/load side of this breaker, as would be the 60A breaker feeding the garage. Nothing could ever pull more than 200A as its all fed from the 200A disconnect. Which is why I assumed it would be OK... stevewm fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Sep 17, 2013 |
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Sep 17, 2013 22:34
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stevewm posted:The feed going to the main house panel is on the output/load side of this breaker, as would be the 60A breaker feeding the garage. That's not was I was picturing. In that case, yes, it should be just fine. You'll need to separate the neutral and ground in the sub panel and provide another grounding mechanism for the sub panel, not connected to the main house ground (just throw in a couple ground rods and bond them together). kastein posted:There is a 95% chance the TWC tech is lazy/stupid/incompetent. Cable install techs are almost universally worthless. This is an excellent point.
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Sep 17, 2013 23:06
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kastein posted:There is a 95% chance the TWC tech is lazy/stupid/incompetent. Cable install techs are almost universally worthless. I was with him the entire time. The only thing going into the ground is a buried 220 line in conduit that goes to my outside AC unit, and there weren't any wires going under the house either. I don't think it's on the water as my water supply comes in from the opposite side of the house. I'm going to pull the panel off Friday to see if I can see anything run. The other problem is my AC unit has 100A breaker on it, as well as the inside supply. The main on the box on the inside is only 50. I honestly don't think the box was installed to code properly. We'll see though.
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Sep 18, 2013 02:39
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Take some pictures inside the panel and we can see what we find. Dumb question. Basement only circuit, dirt/future cement floor, only enough outlets to run heat tape on pipes and a sump pump. Do I have to use GFCI, or can I get away with a regular breaker given that it's special purpose with all outlets permanently occupied? Hoping for the latter because GFCIs for QO panels cost more than our aid to Africa in a given decade.
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Sep 18, 2013 03:16
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Gothmog1065 posted:I was with him the entire time. The only thing going into the ground is a buried 220 line in conduit that goes to my outside AC unit, and there weren't any wires going under the house either. I don't think it's on the water as my water supply comes in from the opposite side of the house. I'm going to pull the panel off Friday to see if I can see anything run. Well, don't discount that you could have buried ground rods (like completely buried). And if this is an old house, it sounds like you might have 60A service. It was common. Just because there's a 100A downstream doesn't mean the load center was installed wrong. The AC could have been installed wrong/oversized and somebody was too cheap to upgrade their service. kastein posted:Dumb question. Basement only circuit, dirt/future cement floor, only enough outlets to run heat tape on pipes and a sump pump. Do I have to use GFCI, or can I get away with a regular breaker given that it's special purpose with all outlets permanently occupied? Hoping for the latter because GFCIs for QO panels cost more than our aid to Africa in a given decade. Use a GFCI outlet. Is it REQUIRED in an unfinished basement? If you code is or references NEC, it has been since the late 80s.
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Sep 18, 2013 15:15
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That's a good idea, forgot I could do that even though I did exactly that in my bathroom. I heard there was a limit on the number of outlets that can be run off the load terminals of a GFCI, though I've never seen justification for it.
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Sep 18, 2013 15:29
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kastein posted:That's a good idea, forgot I could do that even though I did exactly that in my bathroom. I heard there was a limit on the number of outlets that can be run off the load terminals of a GFCI, though I've never seen justification for it. There is, and I forget what/why, but if you're talking on the scale of what it sounds like (2 outlets or 3 on the load side) you should be fine. My only issue with this is the sump pump. Yeah, it's code to be on GFCI, but I really wouldn't want that on the sump pump if I was counting on it. I'm pretty sure I'd rather be possibly electrocuted than have water damage. I'm positive I'd rather have a whole house burn down than deal with water damage.
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Sep 18, 2013 15:54
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I thought code allowed for non-gfci circuits for devices that should still operate in those conditions, specifically for things like sump pumps and refrigerators.
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Sep 18, 2013 18:34
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Just had the most bizarre thing happen yesterday evening. Out of nowhere, half the lights in the house started flickering, my UPSes started beeping, and poo poo got weird. I thought it was a temporary brownout, but after a few seconds I killed the main breaker just to be safe. Checked with a meter, one leg was 122V, but the other was 90V. Went ahead and called it in, then proceeded to check and every few minutes it dropped 10V until the bad leg got down to 40V. I was able to turn on a few single pole circuits on the good leg so we weren't totally in the dark. Cue 1.5 hours later and the Oncor guy arrives and confirms that it is a bad service wire. We have all buried utilities around here and there was a partial short somewhere between the meter and the street box. (He almost cut my fiber line digging up the street box, I nearly poo poo my pants because I work from home and need that fiber to do so). Cue another 1-2 hour wait and the underground crew shows up, drops what looked like 4/0 or 3/0 cable on the ground and got us up and running again. Next day they replaced the street box with one that is flush with the dirt so it would be more accessible, located the fault with a machine that told them how far down the wire it was, and fixed it with a splice. I thought for certain it would be under a tree or something but nope, it was near the street box with no obvious source of the failure. So apparently buried lines from 1971 can just up and fail with no obvious cause like tree roots. I also learned a couple of interesting things: Apparently these wires can fail in ways that don't short them out but fail to deliver full voltage. I would have assumed it would melt the wire and cause an actual break in current eventually but it never did. I also would have assumed the transformer would just keep feeding 120V at however many amps (1500 maybe?) but that didn't happen either. My meter box has a bypass switch that allows the meter to be removed without cutting power to the home, or to turn the power on/off if the meter is removed. I had no idea this was a thing. They don't bother burying the lines in conduit of any kind and it was not nearly as deep as I thought. It makes me take the "call before you dig" warnings about 100X as seriously. They don't use any of those fancy disconnects you see in Holmes on Homes when hydro turns off underground power with bus blocks, bolts, and rubber boots; the feeds just come into the box and are bolted together with a pigtail, then the pigtail is bolted to the legs going to each home and shrink wrapped. The main pigtail connection is just covered with a cardboard-looking tube of some kind and shoved in the box, not even shrink wrapped. If water ever flooded the box, it would certainly short out and melt the feed wires, unless the transformer has some magical short-circuit detector. Simulated fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 19:42
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Bad Munki posted:I thought code allowed for non-gfci circuits for devices that should still operate in those conditions, specifically for things like sump pumps and refrigerators. I believe that's the case in either the I-codes or the NEC but not the other. At least there was something screwy like that going on when I last was enforcing code. I never gave anyone poo poo for using a non-GFCI for specific purposes like that for obvious reasons.
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Sep 18, 2013 19:50
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Motronic posted:I believe that's the case in either the I-codes or the NEC but not the other. At least there was something screwy like that going on when I last was enforcing code. I never gave anyone poo poo for using a non-GFCI for specific purposes like that for obvious reasons. Dedicated equipment outlets don't need GFCI, but it's a good idea to have a sump on a GFPE. I think the leakage on GFPE is 200mA. That's enough to let you know your pump wiring is on its way out, but still pretty high so there aren't any nuisance trips. Ender.uNF posted:
What almost certainly happened is your neutral failed. "120V" circuits in a house are just single-phase 240V with the neutral electrically in the middle. When the neutral craps out, all the stuff one one phase of your breaker box acts as a voltage divider for the other half. Turning on only one half is a primo way to get 240V into something. A better way is to turn on every breaker on one phase, and a single light bulb on the other. Smoke comes out of electronics AND lights. The wires do not care. 240V in the ground is pretty mellow. Depending on your yard it can be like 24" deep (or shallow). There was probably a split bolt and the neutral just corroded through since it's bare aluminum wire that's been underground for thirty years. babyeatingpsychopath fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 20:30
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:What almost certainly happened is your neutral failed. babyeatingpsychopath posted:There was probably a split bolt and the neutral just corroded through since it's bare aluminum wire that's been underground for thirty years. Ender.uNF posted:So apparently buried lines from 1971 can just up and fail with no obvious cause like tree roots. Ender.uNF posted:I also learned a couple of interesting things: Ender.uNF posted:My meter box has a bypass switch that allows the meter to be removed without cutting power to the home, or to turn the power on/off if the meter is removed. I had no idea this was a thing. Ender.uNF posted:They don't bother burying the lines in conduit of any kind and it was not nearly as deep as I thought. It makes me take the "call before you dig" warnings about 100X as seriously. We put everything AT LEAST 4' deep, except for a special situation. Ender.uNF posted:They don't use any of those fancy disconnects you see in Holmes on Homes when hydro turns off underground power with bus blocks, bolts, and rubber boots; the feeds just come into the box and are bolted together with a pigtail, then the pigtail is bolted to the legs going to each home and shrink wrapped. The main pigtail connection is just covered with a cardboard-looking tube of some kind and shoved in the box, not even shrink wrapped. If water ever flooded the box, it would certainly short out and melt the feed wires, unless the transformer has some magical short-circuit detector.
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Sep 18, 2013 23:06
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Dedicated equipment outlets don't need GFCI, but it's a good idea to have a sump on a GFPE. I think the leakage on GFPE is 200mA. That's enough to let you know your pump wiring is on its way out, but still pretty high so there aren't any nuisance trips. Dumb question. What is a GFPA and where can I get one for a square D QO panel? I've heard of and used far too many GFCI and AFCI or CAFCI breakers, but never heard of GFPA. And for once google is failing me. E: durr, GFPE. I reed gud 
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Sep 19, 2013 01:42
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Motronic posted:Well, don't discount that you could have buried ground rods (like completely buried). Well, out of the meter I have a 200A main, and two 100A breakers from there, one I know services the breaker box inside the house, the other I guess might go to the condenser outside AND the furnace inside. Haven't traced the wiring on that side to verify. However, I do have a ground. It was the line in the conduit. They used probably 8-10 gauge stranded wiring in some thick rear end sheathing which at first glance I thought was 12/2 or 12/3 running underground. The rod is there buried underground, I found it after fishing around for a bit. Would the stranded wiring be OK? It made it pretty much impossible for anybody else to ground to that wiring as it seems TWC requires all of their service drops be pulled to power now.
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Sep 19, 2013 05:37
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kastein posted:Dumb question. What is a GFPA and where can I get one for a square D QO panel? I've heard of and used far too many GFCI and AFCI or CAFCI breakers, but never heard of GFPA. And for once google is failing me. GFPE is "ground fault protection for equipment." QO-series breakers are sold under the "EPD" range, and they're like $400 for a 20A. You can find GFPEs as in-line modules for cords in the $20-50 range. edit: oh wow. QO120EPD1201 has a $542 list price. Yay.
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Sep 19, 2013 11:43
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aaaaahahahahahaha NO. Who are they kidding? I'll either run GFCI or break the law and run regular breakers for the really critical equipment far before I'll spend $542 on a breaker.
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Sep 19, 2013 14:44
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Gothmog1065 posted:Would the stranded wiring be OK? It made it pretty much impossible for anybody else to ground to that wiring as it seems TWC requires all of their service drops be pulled to power now. Stranded is perfectly acceptable, and I don't know why it would prevent anyone else from using it. Do you mean flat braided (which still wouldn't prevent anyone from using it, they just likely don't know how or have the correct parts).
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Sep 19, 2013 15:21
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Motronic posted:Stranded is perfectly acceptable, and I don't know why it would prevent anyone else from using it. More along the lines of they put conduit on it, and I guess they're not allowed to get into the box itself to ground. One ground is just attached to my box itself. I'll have to get a hold of an in house tech to find out.
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Sep 19, 2013 16:21
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Gothmog1065 posted:More along the lines of they put conduit on it, and I guess they're not allowed to get into the box itself to ground. One ground is just attached to my box itself. I'll have to get a hold of an in house tech to find out. Oh...so we're back to the issue is that a brain dead cable contractor is trying to do electrical work. Okie. Well, if you want it done right do it yourself or get an electrician to bond something to the ground and run it out of the meter box with a proper grommet so the short bus guy can connect to it.
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Sep 19, 2013 16:29
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The power company installed a new pole behind my garage with three huge.... things on it, which look nothing like transformers. My neighbor says the crew told him they were generators and would aid in our power getting restored quickly during outages. My question is, does the term generator have a different meaning in this context? I am assuming these are not gas powered generators, but.... maybe? Also, there is a braided copper line running down the pole which I assume is the ground. It was recently hacked apart by a scrapper, and the power company won't respond to calls I have made to get it fixed. This is a fairly serious issue worth correcting, no?
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Sep 19, 2013 17:40
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Could you post a picture? And yes that cut ground is a hazard, don't touch it.
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Sep 19, 2013 18:14
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Those are probably contactors or a capacitor bank to improve the power factor of the grid supplied by those lines. Seeing as I doubt you live in an industrial park I'd bet on contactors, mind posting a pic? I'd bet on your neighbor using the wrong term. I've never seen a generator installed on a pole in a residential neighborhood before, nevermind 3 seperate ones for each hot leg. As for the ground, yes it's a hazard, and I really wish there was a way to solve the problem, scrappers/junkies stealing the part they can reach is incredibly common.
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Sep 19, 2013 18:53
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http://imgur.com/kKihQRc Linked for size.
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Sep 19, 2013 22:36
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Slugworth posted:
Protip: add an "l" before the ".jpg" to get a smaller version of a giant imgur image. grover fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Sep 19, 2013 |
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Sep 19, 2013 23:27
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I am beginning to wonder if my neighbor was perhaps drinking when he spoke to the crew. I was really hoping I had some magic boxes that would get my power back up quickly in case of emergency. Ah well.
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Sep 19, 2013 23:31
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Yep, sorry. On the bright side, your neighborhood is now far less likely to suffer blackouts when all your neighbors get EV cars.kastein posted:I've never seen a generator installed on a pole in a residential neighborhood before, nevermind 3 seperate ones for each hot leg. grover fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Sep 20, 2013 |
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Sep 19, 2013 23:34
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grover posted:Yep, sorry. On the bright side, your neighborhood is far less likely go suffer blackouts when all your neighbors get EV cars. Outside of Mexico? No. edit: Unless wind turbines count. 
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Sep 20, 2013 00:18
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Well, I decided to replace an old dimmer switch. Nothing fancy, not even a 3-way. Simple, right? Here's the portal to the dark realms that I found behind the wall plate.  What the gently caress, wiring thread?
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Sep 20, 2013 01:00
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grover posted:Yep, sorry. On the bright side, your neighborhood is now far less likely to suffer blackouts when all your neighbors get EV cars. No, I haven't. Wouldn't surprise me if someone did though, even though it would be a really odd thing to do.
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Sep 20, 2013 01:56
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Ender.uNF posted:They don't bother burying the lines in conduit of any kind and it was not nearly as deep as I thought. It makes me take the "call before you dig" warnings about 100X as seriously. Always call before you dig "It's blowing the **** out of my bucket!!!" High Lord Elbow posted:Well, I decided to replace an old dimmer switch. Nothing fancy, not even a 3-way. What does the note say?!
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Sep 20, 2013 02:08
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Three-Phase posted:Always call before you dig "It's blowing the **** out of my bucket!!!" I had to scream at a couple guys in a bobcat pulling up some bushes down the street. Guy was lifting the blade straight up catching phonelines and almost hitting power.
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Sep 20, 2013 02:11
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Three-Phase posted:What does the note say?! "Front window receptacle." That's right, the person who did this can spell "receptacle." From what I can tell, all the wiring for the various outlets in this room go through the light switch. At one point, the receptacle must have run off the switch, but they must have installed the ceiling light later and just capped off the wiring for the receptacle and splice in the... oh god my head hurts so much. I just wired my hot, neutral, and ground where it seemed appropriate, then jammed the whole mess back into the wall, turned on the breaker, and prayed. So far, so good. I think I'll check the batteries in the smoke detectors just in case.
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Sep 20, 2013 02:51
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High Lord Elbow posted:"Front window receptacle." I must be missing something because that box looks relatively decent. Home runs come in from wherever is closest to the panel, and leave to get wherever they need to in the shortest distance possible. The lights and outlets are on the same circuit. There's a switch leg going up to your light, and the hot goes down to a plug. The neutrals are together. The grounds are together. Nowadays they get a wire nut, but just twisting them all like that is fairly common. What's going on that I'm missing, since this is a VERY VERY common practice, like, pretty much anywhere that cares about the cost of copper wire. Even with the shallowest single-gang box, you're well within box fill limits. (edit: UL listed single-gang box. There are some LV ones at 6cu.in.) Honestly, I take more offense at the code-defying gaps around the box. 1/16" maximum, maybe 1/8" for noncombustible surfaces. babyeatingpsychopath fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Sep 20, 2013 |
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Sep 20, 2013 02:59
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