On Feb 3, 10:05*pm, wrote:
On Thu, 3 Feb 2011 06:59:55 -0800 (PST), Limp Arbor





wrote:
So the ice storm the othe day took down many trees in our area. *My
BIL called me because a branch fell and knocked his neutral wire loose
from the weatherhead. *Some things worked others didn't, biggest
problem was when the fridge kicked on the whole house went dim.

I asked him about a ground rod and he was sure he didn't have one.
Until he could get a guy to climb up there I told him to go get a
ground rod at the Borg and pound it in as far as he could and connect
it to the ground/neutral bar in his panel. *He was able to get the
ground rod about 5' down with a hammer and connected two 12ga copper
wires from the rod to his panel. *After he did this there was no
improvement at all.

An hour later an electrician he knows showed up and reconnected the
neutral to the weaterhead and all was better. *Neither of his hot
leads at the weatherhead were loose or needed to be touched. *So why
wouldn't going directly to ground from the panel have helped his
problem?

*Because the ground connection is a very high impedence connection to
the neutral at the power company.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Not so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return