Re: ground question here...

[Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>]

Hi Sundog,

Of course, the outlet is really two hots and true earth ground for a dryer
or other true 240 appliance.  There really is no neutral in this case.  I
would suggest pulling a neutral wire or repulling the four wires from the
breaker box again (they now insulate ground too).  The bare copper wire was
really not intended to carry return currents...  Since you will probably
use this outlet "hard" it is best not to mess with this potentially
dangerous thing.

It is a bit hard to guess at you exact situation, but I would not use a
ground wire with line currents in it for a safety panel ground.  If the
"genius" made a mistake or a short blows the wire, it will all light right
up.  If worse comes, drive a ground rod for a safety ground and treat the
bare wire as live...

Cheers,

	Terry


At 11:47 AM 9/8/00 -0400, you wrote:
>
> Hi all...
>
> Made a rather disturbing discovery the other day.
>
>    I'm putting in a workbench (maybe this weekend?), and have a 240v drop
>right over where it's to go.  I was going to run that into a panel and give
>myself a few 15A 120v breakers.  But I found that the "genius" that wired
>the garage ran 2 hots and used the bare copper wire as the ground & neutral.
>Not good.  I can pull 120v from either hot to the ground/neutral, but will
>that be a "safe" ground for the variac or other stuff?  I truly hate gettin'
>shocked.
>
>								Sundog
>