On Mon, 29 Mar 2004 17:47:38 GMT, Lurch wrote:

No. If you fire the genny up and plug something in is it unsafe?

Depends...

It's the same as powering a few small items in the house throught
the existing wiring.

Except that without N bonded to E and L E fault will not cause any
fault current to flow (think about it there is no circuit...) but will
raise the N way above E, probably up to the full generator output
voltage. Bear in mind that most switches and MCBs are single pole in L
then things "switched off" aren't. Also as N and E are quite likely to
be interconnected somewhere the installations E could also rise to the
full generator output voltage.

One end of the generators winding needs to be bonded to the frame of
the generator and to local earth and to the main earth terminal of the
installation. It is the bonding of local earth to the main earth
terminal and thus the suppliers earth that can be problematical with
some types of installation.

For extra safety you could install an earth spike and connect it to
the generators earth terminal, that's about all you'll need to do.

Assuming that the gennys earth terminal also bonds to one of the
generators phases.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail