On Wed, 7 Nov 2007 09:31:47 -0500, "Mike Marlow"
wrote:


Help me out here mac - what is this that you refer to as a kiosk?

Sorry.. We're in a new development in Mexico and each house has a 4 foot high
stucco box in front of it for the electrical service.. My wife says it's a
kiosk, which I'm probably spelling wrong and thought it was a small display in a
shopping mall.. ;-]


Since your ground and your neutral are tied together in the box, it should
not matter. You can run a generator without a ground (separate ground rod
near the generator) all day long with no problems. It's done every day all
across America. That means you're only running the two hot legs and the
neutral back to the panel. You look just like the public utility at this
point. Tie the ground and the neutral together as you did by clamping to
earth ground, and tie the panel to earth ground and you've effectively done
the same thing. That of course, assumes that both of those ground rods were
indeed making good earth contact. Just being driven into the ground 8' does
not assure good earth ground. As odd as that sounds, when I was in the Air
Force they used to inspect our earth grounds every few months. Sometimes
the ground would read a high resistance and they'd pour water there to see
if that fixed it. Then of course, they'd schedule a follow up inspection to
make sure that the ground was indeed good. At home, nobody measures their
earth ground. We just sink rods and move on.

Might be what they did on or neighbors house... he has one rod, we have 2..

It's hard to guess in retrospect, what was wrong, but this really sounds
more like a fundamental wiring mistake - either in your cable or how you hit
the panel. Somehow you put a leg of voltage on the panel box. I'll just
about guarantee there was a wiring error in there somewhere.

Very possible... Working with Mexican contractors is a real test of patience and
endurance..
Our blueprints show 3 breakers in the kitchen, in reality there's ONE.. for
everything, including the refrigerator..
We called him on it and he offered to tear up the wall (insulated cement block)
and rewire, but after several fixes of this type we just told him to forget it..
They had to cut walls for the missing wires for the satellite tv, then for the
phone and then for a trap they didn't put in for the laundry... that was enough
wall work..
Oh.. and the water leak that flooded our courtyard every time the water pump ran
was fun, too..
They had to do another roof-to-foundation cut to replace poorly glued joints on
that one... *sigh*



mac

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