Bad neutral = high power consumption?
don_b_1
15 years ago
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billhart
15 years agowayne440
15 years agoRelated Discussions
Power scare
Comments (4)as i was reading your post the first thing that came to mind was a bad neutral. speaking from experience w/ progress energy in 2004, alot of it too LOL, a bad neutral can actually cause a house fire. during the 3 hurricanes in 2004, orlando, we went 24 days w/o power due to PE burning out the neutral when they tried to restore power, they did burn out the circuit breaker board too and nearly caused a house fire. my DH was home and heard the sizzling and sparking coming from the breaker board and was able to cut the main breaker off. after getting the new breaker board our electric 'usage' has been up and even more so since we got a digital meter! in the last 2 months we've gone w/o power twice in the evenings. big big pain for me since i have alot of computer work to do in the evenings and laptop batteries don't last long. since aug 13 04 i have been thinking about a whole house generator and till am thinking about getting one. we have a portable gen but it will not run a/c w/ everything else. all the things we learn about because of the hurricanes LOL wiring, breaker boards, tap cons, generator power loads etc. LOL ~ liz...See MoreNeutral (grounded conductor) in main panel
Comments (7)I guess I was a little hasty in my original answer. I agree with lonesparky that it shouldn't but there are situations where it could be hot when you open the connection. Having 10 amps or so flow through your neutral and ground from a neighbor could happen whether or not there was much voltage behind it. Maybe yours is in a more direct path and some of the neighbors current comes through your connections. You might open it and find a volt or two. Or if yours is the only good connection (very unlikely) in the neighborhood served by one transformer, then opening it could leave you with any part of 240 volts on the opened line and cause lamps and appliances to burn out in the neighbors houses. This is only true if they ALL have bad connections. Sort of reminds me of the time I was on a guy's farm and he told me they had once turned off the big switch outside and some appliances burned out in the house. I couldn't make any sense out of that--you should always be able to shut off a switch. Then I figured the "electrician" who had installed the 3-phase high-leg wiring for feed augers had just added another switch on the high leg (only) instead of using the code-required 3-pole switch. Thus if you left the high leg on and turned off the other two legs, 200 volts from the high leg would go through the motor loads and show up on the 120 volt receptacles, including in the house. Just because it should be safe doesn't mean it is and like the other guys said you need to check not assume....See Moreelectrical wiring issues-neutral has voltage?
Comments (6)When you say two receptacles next to each other are you may be referring to a quad receptacle meaning its 4 outlets in the same faceplate and sharing the same box. If you lost power in both receptacles then the best place to look is behind the receptacles themselves. Receptacles have 2 screws on each side one for top plug and one for bottom. Their is a link between the two screws that is designed to be removed if someone wanted one plug to be used by a switch, for example a table lamp that was controlled by a light switch. What happens when you have quad receptacles is some electricians will connect the line side (wires from panel) on the top set of screws then use the bottom set of screws to power the other receptacle. The problem is that when your operating a vacuum motor (higher current draw) on the second receptacle then your actually running all that current through that little link. If you have older residential grade receptacles they may' only be rated for 15A. By pulling that high current through that link it causes it to heat up, over time the receptacle becomes brittle and breaks. The right thing to do is to connect the make joints using wirenuts so that each receptacle is coming from the wirenut and not theoigh the other receptacle. Be EXTREMELY careful taking the plate off and checking receptacle. Power may still be on from panel and appear to be off if you read with a meter through the outlet. If the outlet did heat up and break it would still be not just not connected in the back anymore....See MoreIdentifying neutral/hot wire in 240V outlet
Comments (26)I'm not sure about the WWII copper shortage. That's just the "story" I heard. Doesn't change the safety issue. Here's an excerpt from a website that attributes the 3 wire "legalization" to the post war housing boom. A little dubious because 1947 seems to fast after WWII for a housing boom. http://www.dli.mn.gov/ccld/PDF/eli_GFCI_history.pdf Circuit grounding was one of the more hotly contested topics in the early history of electrification. In the early 1890Âs, the New York Board of Fire Underwriters had condemned the practice of grounding the neutral as a dangerous practice, especially in a 3-wire Edison (120/240 Volt) system. The Edison utility companies, on the other hand, found just cause to ground their supply systems, even as others thought the utilities were doing this to just save copper and money at the cost of an increased fire risk. The great debate continued for over a decade, but in 1903 the Code was revised to recommend that these circuits be grounded, and finally in the 1913 Code a mandatory circuit grounding requirement was included for circuits like the popular residential Edison 3-wire system. The permission for neutral grounding, the practice of using the neutral conductor as an equipment grounding conductor, was first permitted in the 1947 Code for electric ranges. At around that time many electric utilities were promoting the use of residential 240 V cooking for the post WWII housing boom, and many were even offering to install an upgraded service to older homes at no charge. However, there were no NM cables available at the time with conductors of sufficient ampacity to handle these higher amperage branch circuits. There were, though, service entrance cables of sufficient size, but they had a bare neutral conductor. This special Code permission allowed the frames of these large appliances to be grounded through the uninsulated grounded neutral conductor of the Type SE service entrance cable used to supply the branch circuit. The use of neutral grounding was also extended to electric clothes dryers in 1953. However, almost 50 years later, this special permission for neutral grounding was taken away in the 1996 Code for all but existing branch circuit installations....See Morepaulusgnome
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