On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 10:11:59 -0500, Duane Bozarth
wrote:

Ralph Mowery wrote:

Last week I finally bought a 'digital clamp multimeter - item 42396'.

I rushed home and clamped it around the power cord of the computer
that I leave on all the time. I wanted to know how many amps it was
drawing or how much money I'm wasting by not shutting it down. It
read zero of course, as I guess you need to hook it around one side of
the line at a time, right?

YOu need to clamp the meter around only one wire in the cable. Make sure it
is not the ground wire either. There should be no current on the normally
green ground wire. If it is you have major wiring problems.
You may want to make up something like a short (about a foot long) dropcord
with 3 seperate wires to make the measuring easy.

And, depending on the range of the meter, it may not read accurately at
all 1 A.

Well, that's $10 shot to hell.

No, not really. I actually bought it for charging/checking my 20 yr
old 3 1/2 ton trane compressor and it's future replacement. The
next time I have the cover off, I'll use it to check the current in
the 220 lines. It will be a bit touchy as I can see where the
insulation has cracked and fallen off the wires for about 8 inches
before it goes into the compressor. The wire insulation has been
getting noon sun and city and chemical plant smog for 20 years. But
that damn trane just keeps on keeping on. I've heard you can't stop a
trane.