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In alt.engineering.electrical wrote:

| Mike Tomlinson wrote:
|
|... This is an important principle of the UK wiring code. It's
|referred to as "equipotential bonding."
|
| I wonder if "ring mains" (an extra wire from the last outlet to make
| a loop back to the fusebox) are legal in the US. Seems like a nice way
| to improve voltage regulation with a little extra wire, and if the ring
| wire only breaks in one place, all the outlets keep working.

It is not legal in the US. It is also considered technically unsafe.

You could wire a ring circuit with AWG #14 CU rated at 15 amps and protect
it with a 30 amp breaker under the theory that the current would be split
across the 2 paths between the source (breaker) and the load. This is the
most unsafe configuration because if one of the wires breaks, the breaker
will not detect it, and you won't notice until a fire starts.

You could wire the same circuit to two separate 15 amps breakers. In this
case it is somewhat safer because if one wire breaks, you can't get any use
via one of the breakers, effectivly reducing the current that would trip
the circuit via the remaining breaker. This is still unsafe because the
broken wire could merely be loose, and shutting off one breaker would leave
the circuit potentially live via the other breaker as the wire could come
back in contact.

There could also be confusion with separate breakers. The breakers have to
be on the same pole (phase), an issue not present in the single pole single
phase home wiring most homes have in UK. The USA, however, has two pole
single phase wiring. One way around that would be a "tandem" breaker with
the two handles fused together.

The safest case would be wiring both ends of the ring into the same breaker
rated for the current capacity of the wire as if used in a regular branch
circuit. Even this would have a safety issue. If the wire became loose at
one point in the ring, it would still be a potential hot spot that would be
not as easily noticed as a similar loose wire in a branch circuit. That hot
spot could then start a fire.

So far I have only described issues with the hot wiring. There are issues
with the neutral wiring as well. In all the above configurations, a neutral
would have to be wired in from both ends of the ring, and each be wired in
a separate hole (not doubled up) in the neutral bus bar. A loose neutral in
all these cases would go unnoticed just like a hot wire. But in cases where
the total current available (either the 30 amp single breaker, or tandem 15
amp breakers, described above) exceeds the wiring (when neutral is AWG #14 CU)
a wiring overheating problem exists.

The grounding wire would also have to be wired correctly from both ends.

An even greater double hazard potential exists when the neutral on one end is
broken while the hot on the other end is broken (or shut off at the breaker).
This creates a large inductive loop which can energize other wiring and cause
various problems with many metallic constructions.

Very little is gained by doing this over direct branch circuits. The issue
of voltage stability is addressed by keeping branch circuits short. It is
my understanding that UK ring circuits tend to be longer and run all around
the portion of a house (often an entire floor). Branch circuits in the USA
tend to be shorter.

Very long circuits can have voltage issues. An example is a home with a 1000
foot long driveway into the property, and a string of many lights along the
way. The more distant lights would be dimmer. This can be addressed to at
least balance out the dimming by using a loop-back circuit, which is still a
branch circuit. This is a more expensive circuit that is done by having an
extra hot wire run with the circuit in the same cable or conduit. Each lamp
is connected between the extra wire and the neutral. The extra wire is then
connected to the fed hot wire at the last lamp in the string. There is no
other connected to the fed hot wire other than the last lamp and the source
controlling switch. With this loop-back circuit, each lamp has the same
circuit length, and thus will have the same voltage drop.

The above technique was discussed on electrical-contrator.net a while back,
but they have since changed web site software, and my old links do not work.

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