On 1/13/2013 12:07 PM, bob haller wrote:
On Jan 13, 11:58 am, wrote:
On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 08:27:47 -0800 (PST), "





wrote:
On Jan 13, 11:07 am, George wrote:
On 1/13/2013 10:20 AM, wrote:

On Jan 13, 10:01 am, wrote:
On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 05:57:42 -0600, wrote:
A large store downtown has a heavy FOUR wire triplex feeding the
building. 3 wires are black insulated, the other is the bare neutral.

The thing that caught my attention to it, is that the 4th wire is not
connected to anything. All the triplex I've ever seen is 3 wire, two
are insulated, one is bare. That's for a standard 240V single phase
system.

Im thinking that this cable was intended to be for three phase wiring.
Three hot, and the neutral. Is this right?
Maybe that building once had 3 phase service, or they just had that
cable on hand when they wired it, and used what they had...

That says "3 phase".
Three hots and a neutral.

Did you read the part where he says the "neutral"
is not connected to anything? Sounds like a support
wire to me.

The version on the newsserver I use does not mention anything about the
"neutral" being unconnected.

The confusion is that he first says there are 3 black
wires and a bare neutral. Then he says the "4th wire"
is not connected to anything. Since he was talking
about 3+1 and then says "the 4th wire", I took that
4th wire to be the bare neutral. It's not clear what
the 4th wire is. If the 4th wire is one of the other
three, then I would think he would have said:

There are 3 blacks, one of them is unconnected and
there is a bare neutral. That is the way the rest of you
seem to be interpreting it. Hopefully he'll clarify.

That is why I said "look at the transformers"

The topic is called "what is FOUR wire Triplex for? and the answer is
"3 phase"
I bet if he posts a picture, you are going to see that bare wire
connected to the strand on the pole and one might believe that is not
connected to anything but that is the neutral.

around pittsburgh many aerial drops use a bare wire not connected to
anything but the pole and building mechanically... no electric
connections....

They must have a different take on things. Standard practice is to bond
bare wires than can become energized for any reason even if unused.