[AT] grounds/shower - no answers, just questions.

[Francis Robinson]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Howard Weeks" <weeksh at wildblue.net>


> Any of you ever run into a situation where the neutral lead between
> the transformer and the house was open?
>
> Causes some very interesting problems.
>
> Howard in GA




^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^



    That happened to this house about 5 years ago when my mother was still 
living and at home. The insurance company covered it since the neutral was 
opened by storm damage. It fried everything in the house that had a 
transformer including TV's, radios, furnace controls (2), door bells etc.

    On this other ground thing what happens when you have a feed entry into 
another building from the main box and it enters underground through a rigid 
steel conduit that runs from underground up to an LB and is fastened into 
the back of the breaker box? The neutral bar in that box is bonded by a 
screw through the neutral bar into the back of the box around here. That 
conduit would function pretty much like another ground rod, right? I am 
finding this thread most interesting and full of good information and good 
questions.

    On my old house the electrician that hooked it up with the heavy bare 
ground wire to the ground rod running through the nipple between the breaker 
box and the meter base and down through the big conduit and came out 
underground over to the ground rod. He was in the habit of doing it that way 
since almost all of his work was hooking up to REMC in the next county east 
and that was what they required. This was on the old Public Service Indiana 
(now Duke Energy) and they made him remove it and run it out a hole in the 
bottom of the breaker box and down inside of the wall to exit out under the 
siding next to the ground rod. I ran across this again later when I wired a 
service in an old building I own in the next county. Here in this county I 
have to pull a permit and have a licensed electrician sign off on anything I 
do. In the next county I was able to wire anything without a license or 
permit but it had to be inspected by the power company. They had made one 
change in the requirements. At my old house the ground wire was bare but in 
that building in the next county I had to use an insulated ground wire but 
did run it through the nipple between the box and the meter base.

    Mucking things up even more...   ;-)   I have a large metal bin that 
serves as an anchor point for the tri-plex that runs from my main pole (with 
meter base and big breaker box) out to that bin then on over to the farm 
shop. There they had us drive a ground rod and run a ground wire up the side 
of the bin and attached it to the neutral of the tri-plex. The tri-plex 
neutral had to run through an insulator where it fastened to the bin and the 
ground wire that dropped down the side of the bin also had to run on 
insulators out from the surface of the metal bin.

    A good friend installed a new service in a house for his daughter in 
that next county east  and called the power company to inspect it and 
connect it. They wouldn't hook it up because the meter base was 6" too high 
measured from grade. he dutifully unhooked "everything" and remounted the 
breaker box and meter base about 8" lower and reconnected everything. He 
even had to replace a couple of wires in the house that were now too short. 
He was telling me about his ordeal and I told him that I would not have done 
it. I told him that he had a good 18" of foundation above grade and that I 
would have hauled in a foot of fill dirt, raked it out and told them to come 
back and measure it again... That bit reminds me of the old quote attributed 
to Abe Lincoln when asked why his legs were so long. He is supposed to have 
said that they were just long enough to reach the ground...   ;-)  I don't 
know if it is true or not but it is a good line.   :-)

Lots of strange variations...   :-)

    This is old tractor related since I use my old tractors to till 
"ground"...   ;-)   ;-)   ;-)


--
"farmer"

When you reach the end of your rope
 tie a knot and hang on...

Francis Robinson
Central Indiana, USA
robinson at svs.net