220 Neutral Problem

So Nap does the NEC allow any type of reduced neutral for residential or is it always a full size neutral.



That is one thing i like about this site, you get to learn how things are done south of the border, in your case north of the border.
      

this topic came up on another thread but its buried pretty deep. it is my understanding from several experienced posters that under normal circumstances all neutral current should flow back to the utility neutral, not the grounded plumbing or rods.



i am trying to figure out why. bear with this simplistic example.



100a service - 3 wires in - A (hot+), B (hot-) and N (neutral).

circuit 1 on A is using 12 amps

circuit 2 on B is using 7 amps

so a total of 5 neutral current amps have to go somewhere.



they could all flow back on N, but if bonded to N at the panel is a low resistence connection to say, copper water pipes, wouldnt some of the current flow there?



is the utility neutral supposed to be so low resistence that none of the current would flow to the grounds? if that is the case i need to call my utility ASAP because a considerable amount of current flows to my main ground.



where i am struggling is i dont see how a utility pole or transformer would be any lower resistance than miles of metal plumbing and since they are bonded together, the current can choose (i know wrong word but im not an electrican or an engineer) either path
      

Hello everyone,I have a question about a forklift battery charger i bought. Ok,its an exide forklift battery charger 36 volts. It weighs a ton so i am having to run a 25 foot extension cord to it. My question is,my 220 wall outlet has three holes so i went to lowes and made a 220 extension cord. Now i get to the ac cable coming out of the charger that hooks to the extension cord(plug was cut off),there are 4 wires coming out of the cable green,white,red, and black......the guy at lowes said i could buy a 3 prong plug for it to plug into the female end of the extension cord because one of the 4 wires is probably neutral and i wouldnt have to hook up but the green,white and either the red or black.....is he right? Inside the charger the red,white and black all go to big fuses and green to ground. Also above the fuses it says "factory set to 480 volts ac". I guess my question is,will this charger only work using a 4 prong wall outlet(mine only has 3) and with 4 prong plug hooked to cable coming out of the charger itself or is the guy at lowes right in saying that only the red OR black wire has to be used? Sorry if this is confusing but ive searched and searched online for 3 days and havent found anything. Thanks in advance for any help-Kevin
      

How do I fix a hot neutral reversed electric outlet's wiring?
      

Am doing a bathroom reno and installed a new fan. Original switch was a simple on off single pole. I want to install a DewPoint condensation fan switch that will turn on automatically at a certain moisture level.

The new switch as 4 wires. green ground, red fan, black power, and white neutral. I know the ground, but how do I hook up the neutral and fan to the existing fan set up?

There is a double pole light switch in the same box that has a couple wires to it, and there is a mass of whites that I am not sure where they go



Can I hook up the neutral somewhere else, or put it with the fan like a single pole? What do I do with this?



In the attached picture the switch on the right is the 2 pole light switch and on the left is the fan switch that I hope to replace.



Your Advice is appreciated
      

I have an older QO-Square D eight circuit panel. It is being used as a subpanel and when installed was not bonded.

The neutral bar consists of a bar mounted with one screw and a second bar mounted to it by standoffs. This second bar is where the bonding screw is. I can see no way to separate these two bars for proper bonding. There is no provision for mounting this second bar.

I wish I could post a picture but I will have to work on that.

I am thinking I will have to purchase a new panel but can't understand why neutral and ground cannot be separated.
      

Today I was fixing the water valve to the washing machine, and to get access to the water line, I had to disassemble an outlet. To my shock (no pun intended), I discovered that some moron bootlegged the outlet by connecting neutral and ground together.



Now I'm concerned that I may have this elsewhere in the house. What is the best way to test for this? Obviously I will see 120 V from hot to ground in any case, so that doesn't work. Continuity between neutral and ground is normal, because they are connected at the main panel; I measured the resistance between neutral and ground at an outlet close to the main panel, and it was virtually zero. But that doesn't meat it's bootlegged.



I don't really want to take each outlet apart. And even if I do that, how would I know that the moron didn't connect ground to neutral somewhere inside a wall?



Thanks,
      

I'm trying to fix a problem with a track light installment over the a bar I've just put in. I've done it before. never had issues. but this particular problem is driving me nuts. It just defies logic.  The electrician who actually installed the associated dimmer switches with this dining room area was called as it seems it may be a flaw with his wiring, but he's blown us off and I have to try and solve this myself.



This is how it's all set up. I've been rehabbing our home from top to bottom, and converted our old kitchen into a dining area. Within this dining area are four sets of lights, all controlled from one box containing four dimmer switches. I set up all the new wiring and installation of the lights in the ceiling, and we paid an electrician to come in, check everything out, set up the multiple switches, and connect it all to the board. It's all new copper wiring from beginning to end, as I didn't want to connect or splice in to the old aluminum wiring that was in place. All the new wiring and lights are on a dedicated 15 amp breaker. Three of the sets of lights were set up to be available from the day the electrician came around. The fourth, for the track light over the bar, was left hanging from the ceiling capped off and with the switch off, as I still had work to do installing an overhead wine rack, under which the track was going to be set.



Two days ago I finally got around to putting the track up, but after setting it in place and connecting the power up the lights wouldn't work. I took the lights out to our kitchen, where I installed another track light system some time ago, plugged one of the lights in, and it worked just fine. I then went back to the bar area and used a spare track, then a spare connector, to see if I could isolate the fault, yet neither of the items provided a solution. Now here's the weird bit - every time I tried checking the system out, I'd get 120 volts showing from the wiring and from the track when I'd test with the multimeter. But the second I'd put a light into the track, the multimeter would drop to zero on the voltage reading on either the wiring or the track. Take the light fixture back out, and the voltage would pop back up. Inserting the light was thus completing some kind of odd loop. It wasn't just one light - I double checked by grabbing working lights from the kitchen track and inserting them into the other track - the same problem would pop up. Finally, having come to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with the track at all, I took the whole assembly over to a nearby wall outlet, used some spare electric cable to connect up to the appropriate slots - presto, the light came on! I even double checked all this by grabbing another light fixture destined for our bathroom, and tried connecting it to the wiring over the bar. Nothing. Yet as with the track light, the minute I took it over to the wall outlet and connected it, the light worked.



So everything logically points to the fact it has to be something to do with this individual circuit, right, because a) the light fixtures work when plugged into another circuit and b) the other three dimmers and lights hooked up in the same box work fine and draw power from the same wire cable/breaker combination. The only things left that I can think of is that the electrician has either wired the dimmer switch up incorrectly or that there's some kind of flaw inside the switch itself. Does this make sense?



A friend also told me to double-check to make sure that the black wire feeding power to the light was indeed the hot wire, and it is.  If I touch it with the black test lead from the multimeter and put the red one to the neutral I show 120 volts. If I keep the black test lead on the black wire and put the red test lead to the ground - I also show 120 volts.



A final point. I know I'm not overloading the circuit - not even close. With all four dimmers maxed and every light on - including the test light on the track - I'd only be drawing 8 amps on a 15 amp breaker, besides which I'm only using one set of lights while I'm working on this problem anyway. This is a dedicated circuit, so there's no additional power being drawn away by something else.



So how am I getting 120 volts from this wiring, according to my multimeter, yet it won't light up ANYTHING and keeps giving off the indication that some kind of loop or short is being created every time I actually plug a light into the track? It's got me totally stumped.



Anyone have any ideas?
      

Hi all, this is my first post, so...my kitchen was just renovated and the electrical outlets are on the walls and I wanted them in plugmold under the cabinet. Why didn't it happen?  Long story, but I'm doing it myself now.  The electrical receptacles are on 2 separate circuits with a gfci receptacle on each and neither circuit has a receptacle outside the kitchen where I can put the gfci's, so I'm putting gfci breakers in the panel instead. I've run into a different problem on each circuit that'd like some advice on.



Circuit 1: this is a 20 amp circuit.  I have to plug this circuit's neutral wire into the gfci breaker, but I couldn't see which neutral wire matched the hot wire (buried in mess of wires) and I don't have a continuity tester so I just pulled one neutral at a time (tedious) until the circuit failed, but it never failed. So I did this again for every neutral...same result. This circuit shares a few boxes with other circuits so I'm wondering if the neutrals on different circuits are tied together somewhere, and if so I'm pretty sure, but not completely, that that's not going to work with the gfci breaker.  So I didn't install that gfci breaker since I'm not confident it would actually gfci (yep i verbified gfci).  What do you think?



Circuit 2:  this is a 20 amp circuit.  This circuit currently has the refrigerator, gas stove and range hood, and then a gfci in front of 3 electrical receptacles, which already sounds bad since I thought the kitchen receptacles required 2 dedicated circuits. I replaced that breaker with no problem, but it tripped after a few minutes and continued to trip every few minutes. I haven't changed anything else on that circuit yet and it's never tripped before, but now it is, so I put the old breaker back for now. The current gfci receptacle is only protecting the 3 outlets since the appliances are ahead of it. I know you wouldn't normally want the appliances gfci protected, so do you think the refrigerator motor may be a problem?  Do I need the appliances on a separate circuit?  What would you suggest I do?



Thanks, and if you're wondering "why all the effort?", it's partly because I'm meddlesome, partly because I'm bored, and partly because the backsplash tile is to be on showcase, not the electrical receptacles.
      

I have a light switch in my kitchen that is not being used.  I plan to use it for a new light that will be installed over the counter.  The switch box has a 3 way wire that is live. I have a basic current tester that lights up "110 V" when it detects a live circuit.  When I use my circuit tester to test for current in the black wire (with neutral), it barely lights the tester.  When I test the red wire (with neutral), there is no current.  When i test the red and black together, the tester lights up nice and bright.  So I am a little confused.  I do not need it to be 3-way, this switch will only control one light.  Any advice on how to wire this?



Thanks!