30 AMP home wiring Question
The previous owners of our home installed a 8/3 wire from the breaker box to the garage. I assume they intended to install a welder or something, but never did. The wire terminates in the breaker bo...
Forum Discussion
ChooChooMan74 wrote:I am still wayne_tw wrote:on my panel, all the neutrals and any circuits that have a ground are all connected to the same bus.Johno02 wrote:
The white wire is always a ground, and codes may just require an earth ground at the outlet.
This is totally incorrect! The white wire is a neutral and is required to complete the circuit. The ground wire will be bare and will ultimately connect to a ground to earth. Sometimes the neutral and ground are bonded, but the two are separate circuits.
But from the breaker box to the outlet (load), they are separate circuits. The white carries the return current from the load; if everything is working correctly, the current in the black wire is exactly equal to the current in the white wire.
The ground wire is often called the safety ground. It's there to carry the current if there's a short somewhere in the circuit.
