220 Volt mishap
I went to plug in my RV inside my parents shop my dad had wired. The outlet is a 220 volts with three prongs. Something similar you would plug in a welder or compressor. I used the 30 amp RV receptac...
Forum Discussion
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.
