220 Volt mishap

I'm not kidding when I say the thought of that poor woman laying on the ground, haunts my dreams. I still have occasional nightmares and it's been 27-years. I wish it would fade it serves no real purpose except to torture too many of my nights. :( :( :(

Old-Biscuit wrote:
Continue what you are doing and nextr post will be about more than a fried fridge element.

YOU are not an electician.

YOU do not understand 50A , 30A wiring

YOU do not belong messing around with it

HARSH words....you bet.
BUT you are messing outside your 'sand box; and need to stop before you burn down the house or get injured.

Then my words won't seem so harsh.

Sage advice it is - harsh it is not!

Primitive Pete: Read and heed what he said...:S

Hire an electrician!

His fee will be less than the $$ you spend on repairs!..:C

~

cooperrobt wrote:
Keep this up and you will be sending some electrician's through private school.u

And to think of all the comedians out of work.

Oh the earth neutral issue gets complicated. Transformer eddy currents can screw up the most carefully laid assumptions. The reasons why neutral is and never could be earth is the stuff you stamp your feet on is a different universe than a center tap in a wye or delta wound transformer. That center tap is called neutral and it's a hell of a long way from there to earth ground. Bonding between transformer center tap and earth ground takes place at the home or facility: Service Drop.

Do NOT mess with a very complex engineering plan for safety -unless- earth ground is not available at the receptacle. Connection to a receptacle minus an adequate correct ground is playing Russian Roulette.

Well-meaning campers down here have rigged BOOTSTRAP GROUND wires where a stub wire connects neutral to the ground pin DANGER WILL ROBINSON! It pays to understand why the National Electric Code DEMANDS electrical circuits be routed and connected a certain way with no shortcuts. It is to save lives and minimize property damage.

Keep this up and you will be sending some electrician's through private school.u

Calkidd wrote:

KD4UPL wrote:
You must have a neutral. Yes, you could connect the existing outlet's hots to a proper RV 50 amp. You could use the existing ground for both a ground and neutral. It would work. It's not proper and not recommended. Code requires separate ground and neutral wires back to the main service.

Will it damage anything? I am only doing this temporarily. I am in transition between homes and living in the 5er for a few months.

The problem you create by using the ground as a neutral is the ground will become a current carrying conductor (it will carry the neutral current). Since code requires that most of the metal in your house, garage, etc be connected to ground, these items become current carrying conductors if the ground is used as a neutral.

Some examples of the problems this causes that I've seen: Arcing conduit connectors (I got a call that the screws on the "electric pipes" (EMT conduit) were smoking), shocks from water at a sink with plastic water lines (and metal drains), shocks between duct work & copper pipes, etc.

A plumber disconnecting a pipe joint could receive a shock between the two sections of pipe.

All these are reasons code does not allow combined grounds & neutrals (with an older exception that was used for ranges & dryers in the past, but is no longer allowed.)

Yes it would work, but it is dangerous & I don't recommend doing it even for a temporary fix.

Calkidd wrote:
I unplugged everything and went back to 15 amp service. If I need to use 30 amp I will drop the one 110 leg of the 240 and make it the neutral.

I get some of the concerns, but they pretty much boarder rudeness. A point can be made without the need to be condescending or rude. Thanks for all the help.

Text is really difficult to figure out the tone of what folks really mean.. What sounds "rude" to you in fact is saving your bacon.

In the nearly 30 yrs of working with electrical and electronic stuff I have never given it one thought to do what you have done.

Sorry you feel others have been offending but they must have managed to get you to realize that while you managed to make it work it isn't the proper way.

In some sense you were really using the "ground" wire as a "neutral", not a proper thing to do especially when the ground wire typically used is at least one wire gauge smaller than the hot and neutral.

This can create an overload situation on the ground wire and a fire hazard.

Old school 240V outlets were 3 wire (two hot and one GROUND), they were designed strictly for appliances which ONLY need 240V. Electric water heaters come to mind.. Some appliances needed 240 but also 120V, those types are electric stoves and dryers, they used the ground as the neutral in order to get the 120V for timers.. This allowed small electric currents to be present on the ground wire..

New school 240V wiring requires FOUR wires, two hot, one neutral and one ground..

This now removes the timer from the neutral and the ground wire no longer carries any electrical currents under normal operational parameters.

Not going to quote "NEC" stuff but I will mention that using the ground wire as a neutral does not meet the codes concerning sub panel wiring (your RV breaker panel becomes a sub panel of your homes main breaker panel).

Sub panels MUST keep neutral and ground separated and the neutral and ground must only be bonded (IE tied together) at the main entrance panel.

Doing it right and correctly out of the gate would have prevented you from ever posting this thread in the first place.. Totally avoiding getting your feelings hurt.

We learn from our mistakes and move on..

Time to get "camping", life's to short to be upset.

Old-Biscuit wrote:
When it comes to people messing with electricity and doing it wrong.....RUDENESS is the least of my concern.

X2

Calkidd wrote:
I unplugged everything and went back to 15 amp service. If I need to use 30 amp I will drop the one 110 leg of the 240 and make it the neutral.

I get some of the concerns, but they pretty much boarder rudeness. A point can be made without the need to be condescending or rude. Thanks for all the help.

Took 5 pages and several folks posting BEFORE you seemed to GET IT!

When it comes to people messing with electricity and doing it wrong.....RUDENESS is the least of my concern.

Do it right or have it done right. BUT don't keep doing it wrong and then get upset because folks are trying to give you proper guidance

30A will power your 50A rv providing sufficient power for your temporary living needs.

I wish you the best.

Yup, you can make a very serviceable 30 amp RV setup with the following:

Assume proper gauge wire for the length of the run and 30 amp load.

The one hot.

Remove the other hot wire and label "neutral" at both ends (unless already white). Attach this wire to the neutral bus bar in the house main breaker box.

Wire the green/ground wire to the ground buss in the house main breaker box and at the RV end.