On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:48:39 -0800, Joe wrote:

For some applications there are indeed 2 grounds, a neutral ground and
a machine ground. There is some reason the phase may be out if not
wired correctly (no im not an electrician) It is the difference
between 3 and 4 wire 220. Same voltage with different configuration...

Yep.. I hit this last year when we were running off of a generator..

The contractors generator didn't work very well... water pump and water heater
would not both run without blowing the breaker on the gen., so we ran one at a
time..
When we bought our own gen., I noticed that it had a 4 prong outlet, where the
contractor's had 3...
They has wires going to each hot and what I "assumed" was ground..
This was before we had electricity, obviously, and the 2 hot wires ran to lugs
in the box above where the meter would be and the ground ran to one of 2 pieces
of re-bar in the ground in front of the meter "kiosk"..

We ran the 2 hots as they did, the ground to the same place they used and the
neutral to the other grounding rod..
Everything worked well and my son & I were busy congratulating ourselves when my
wife mentioned that the breaker panel (in the kitchen pantry) was "buzzing"...
Found out it wasn't buzzing, just ARCING... oops...
Shut everything down, reversed the ground and neutral and fired up the
generator...Everything worked great for the next couple of months, until we got
"real" electricity...


mac

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