"Terry" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:45:45 -0400, "John Grabowski"
wrote:



Shutting off power to the entire house is not a guarantee that the
neutral
won't be hot. Under rare circumstances if your neighbor lost his neutral
connection it is possible that his return current would travel through
the
earth to your neutral connection and then back to the transformer.



Could you explain this a little more, really slow.


Coming off of the power company's transformer to a single family residence
are two hot conductors and a neutral conductor.

The neutral conductor is the return path for the current to go back to the
transformer from the two hot conductors.

The neutral conductor is bonded to earth via the water pipe and ground rods.

If you were to disconnect the neutral conductor the current will need to
find another path back to the transformer.

It can go through the earth via the ground rods and water pipe directly to
the transformer ground rod and grounding conductor.

However, depending on the location of the transformer and the neighbor's
house (Or the quality of the transformer ground) the current might find a
better path back to the transformer by going through the neighbor's water
pipe and ground rods into the neighbor's electrical panel and then
continuing through the neighbor's neutral conductor back to the transformer.