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John McGaw John McGaw is offline
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Default Breaker Panel 220V problem

RBM wrote:
If he's measuring between the "two hot wires" he should read 240 volts
regardless if his neutral is intact or not. The only reason he would get
anything less would be one dead hot leg. When he reads between each hot leg
to ground, he reads the good leg normally and the dead leg he gets a
backfeed reading through any 240 volt appliance that happens to be turned
on. Both will give a 120 volt reading.





"Joseph Meehan" wrote in message
...
Since you are getting 110 (should be 120 in most areas) I doubt if it
is the power company. I suspect you have a floating neutral and that
needs to be addressed as you cold end up with damaged electronics or even
a fire. (I had a boss once that burned down his photo studio due to one.)

However since I am not sure of exactly what you are measuring and how,
I would suggest asking the power company to come out and make sure their
end is OK first.

Note: If you have or can find an old analog volt meter rather than
that digital, I suspect you will find that those 54 V measurements will
become 0V. In fact if you go now and measure them again you might get
something lower or higher this time. If so that is another indication of
a floating neutral.

"ronaldo123" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

I have problem at home. Recently my oven, water heater, dryer....
stopped working. I tried playing with the breakers but it all seems
to be fine. One curious thing in the panel is that if I measure the
voltage between the 2 hot wires it reads 58volts... if I measure each
of the hot wires to the ground it measures 110volts.. is this normal?
Should the voltage between the 2 hotwires measure 220V ?

Thanks!

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia 's Muire duit







If it is truly an open hot leg then surely somewhere else in the house
there should be signs of some of the lights not working and some of the
outlets being dead. That is just the way the standard North American
split 240V system works. I won't pretend to know what it is that the OP
is actually measuring or how he is measuring it -- there are just too
many variables involved especially if he is using a DVM.

Personally, I would start measuring at the utility feed and then through
the bus bars and forward but there is no way I will encourage a
non-experienced person to do what I would do. I learned to do much of
this while I was still a teenager and credit my continued breathing to
an abundance of caution.

--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]
http://johnmcgaw.com