Do you use ground as neutral?

Answer 1

Answer for USA, Canada and countries running a 60 Hz power supply service.Once upon a time, this was legal and routinely done, especially on electric dryers. It is no longer legal anywhere that I know of.

If your equipment is grounded using a separate ground wire, and the neutral wire breaks, the appliance may not function, but no one will be hurt.

If, on the other hand, you use the ground wire as the neutral, and it breaks, IF THE APPLIANCE HAS A METAL CHASSIS AND/OR CASING CONNECTED TO THE GROUND WIRE IT WILL BECOME LIVE!Anyone touching it could be killed!

It's just not worth saving a few dollars over. Buy and install the proper 4-conductor cable (called 3-wire with ground) and be safe.

A different take from a professional appliance installer and electrician:

Up until the mid to late 1980's the ground and neutral were tied to the same bar in the panel. So unless someone who has a house built prior to this has had a complete electrical service rebuild the ground and neutral of all of the circuits are connected to the same place.

If you have an older home and there are only three wires feeding a 220v appliance the ground and neutral are interchangable. In fact, if the unit had two hots, a neutral and a ground, the ground and neutral were tied together. This is still acceptable practice and is diagrammed in the specifications for every appliance appliance that I am aware of. (Only Miele for a time was particular about not mixing the ground and neutral, although they could never tell me why it mattered. They have since dropped that requirement).

There are a lot of new 220v appliances that have only three wires. Usually two hots and a ground. It would be perfectly fine to hook the ground to the neutral if that was all you had.

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As always, if you are in doubt about what to do, the best advice anyone should give you is to call a licensed electrician to advise what work is needed.

Before you do any work yourself,

on electrical circuits, equipment or appliances,

always use a test meter to ensure the circuit is, in fact, de-energized.

IF YOU ARE NOT ALREADY SURE YOU CAN DO THIS JOB

SAFELY AND COMPETENTLY

REFER THIS WORK TO QUALIFIED PROFESSIONALS.

Answer 2

No. Your ground and neutral must be seperate. If you are working on old work you can install an ungrounded outlet, but that can be dangerous if something goes wrong. It is not legal on new work. Also you can't use a bare ground wire as neutral as it has no insulation. The bare wire must be ground. Your best bet is to run new wire. Yes its more work, but it is the safest route. Please, please, please don't bond ground to neutral at your outlet. Do it right or hire a professional, negligence is fatal with electricity.

Answer 3

Answer for USA, Canada and countries running a 60 Hz supply service.Some 240 volt appliances - for example some air conditioners, clothes dryers, or ranges - may need a neutral wire to supply devices such as 120 volt time-clocks, programmers, etc.

Do not confuse a neutral wire with a safety ground wire. A 240V GFCI usually has to be connected to the neutral wire of the source cable/line, coming from the breaker panel, to be able to supply the neutral to the load if it requires one, as was described above. If the load does not need a neutral - because it does not have any 120 volt devices such as time-clocks, programmers, etc. - then no neutral wire needs to be run to the load.

However a GFCI needs to have a ground wire from the source so that it can operate correctly to detect fault currents flowing into the safety ground wire coming from the load.

Note that the modern GFCI's other main way of detecting faults is to detect a sufficient difference - usually a difference of only about 30 milliamps - between the current flowing in one "hot" (for example a black wire) compared to the current flowing in the other "hot" (for example a red wire). Such a difference or imbalance must be caused by a leakage current going from one of the hots to ground without going through the protective ground wire: for example from a damp control switch that has cracked plastic insulation to a person's hand and then through his or her body to the damp floor in a kitchen or utility room. Note that no fault current would actually flow into the protective ground wire in such a fault condition.

One of the main reasons the RCD (Residual Current Device) was invented was to be able to detect the kind of fault that has nothing to do with any flow of current through the protective ground wire.

In an old appliance it is also possible that there is some broken insulation on one or both of the hot wires and dampness inside the appliance - particularly if there are some damp Spiders' webs! - which causes a fault current to flow from the hot wire to the unit's frame. The frame should always be connected to the protective ground wire so, in that case, the GFCI will trip for both reasons: for the imbalance in currents flowing in the hots and for the leakage current going into the protective ground wire.

In USA and other countries the circuit of the RCD was added to the earlier, and originally much simpler, GFCI(Ground Fault Circuit Breaker), to give the protection described in these paragraphs. For various reasons the name of the modern device was still kept as "GFCI" and not "RCD" as it is more accurately known in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

Before you attempt to do any work on 240V 60Hz branch circuits you need to learn and understand your local wiring codes, and, unless you are already a licensed electrician, you must obtain any necessary permits before you do the work and have any mandatory safety inspections done before the new circuit is made live.

Answer for countries in Europe and other world areas running a 50 Hz supply service.A neutral wire is always needed as the return path back to the power station for any single-phase circuit in which the live wire feeds alternating current into the connected load.

Before you attempt to do any work on 230V 50Hz branch circuits you need to learn and understand your local wiring codes, and, unless you are already a licensed electrician, you must obtain any necessary permits before you do the work and have any mandatory safety inspections done before the new circuit is made live.

<><><>

As always, if you are in doubt about what to do, the best advice anyone should give you is to call a licensed electrician to advise what work is needed.

Before you do any work yourself,

on electrical circuits, equipment or appliances,

always use a test meter to ensure the circuit is, in fact, de-energized.

IF YOU ARE NOT ALREADY SURE YOU CAN DO THIS JOB

SAFELY AND COMPETENTLY

REFER THIS WORK TO QUALIFIED PROFESSIONALS.

Answer 4

My son-in-law is an electrician. I built an addition on my home and did all the wiring myself. Soon after I hired him to replace my breaker box.

He opened the box, grabbed the neutral wires, yelled, jumped back, and said, "What did you do? You crossed a groud and a neutral wire." We checked, he was right.

The hot wire brings exectricity from the power plant. The ground wire will be "hot" whenever an appliance or switch is on because it is completing the circuit back to the generator. The neutral wire (second ground) will be "hot" if there is a short circuit, and carry the current to the earth.

Answer 5

Depends entirely on the application. Assuming alternating current, in household use, there are Three primary wires that come from the pole, T1, T2, and Neutral. T1 has 120volts to Neutral, T2 has 120volts to Neutral, and T1 and T2 have 240volts across at 180o apart. Neutral is directly connected to ground. This is Single phase. Industrial three phase has T1, T2, and a T3, each 120o apart, with 240volts across and 120volts to neutral/ground. The degrees is the rotation of Positive and Negative poles.

Answer 6

Yes, 480 to 240 volt Transformers can be purchased. If you need a neutral in the center of the 240 volts, to allow for a three wire system, then that must be specified at the time of purchase. If the transformer is a control transformer, the X2 leg should be grounded. This will help greatly in troubleshooting the control equipment.

Answer 7

No, using the grounding wire (bare copper or green insulated) for a neutral is dangerous. If the circuit originates from a sub-panel it now makes the grounding conductor electrically "Hot" as well as the metal panel enclosure. If it originates from the main, anyone working on the panel would be unaware of the hazards associated with this circuit. ( I deleted the first answer as it was incorrect in its entirety)

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The above is not quiet accurate. Residential sub-panels are to be wired with a three conductor otherwise the installation would never pass inspection.

On a sub panel the neutral bar is isolated from the grounded enclosure by the removal of the bonding screw that comes with every panel. The electrical code states that there is to be only one place that the grounding bond take place and that is at the main distribution.

Answer 8

The neutral wire should never be used as a ground wire. The neutral wire in some cases takes a convoluted path back to the neutral bar in the distribution panel. On a ground fault condition the path of least resistance (low impedance) is needed to trip the breaker as fast as it can. This is the purpose of the ground wire. Using the neutral path, this does not happen.

Answer 9

no, you ground the neutral