Electrician says Motor Homes want 220v

Rick Jay wrote:

myredracer wrote:
So if you had exactly 10 amps flowing on one leg and exactly 10 on the other, there'd be no current flowing on the neutral. See diagram below. So does that mean you could do without the neutral in that case? Nope, don't even think about it.

Actually, in THAT case, where the currents are balanced, you COULD remove the neutral and things would still work. :) Until the loads unbalanced, and then bad things would happen! :)

~Rick

Yea, an open neutral can make for some truly entertaining troubleshooting. Nothing like turning a table lamp on, watch it glow like a fireball, and see the voltage on that leg spike by 40-50 volts. I had a customer who lost a neutral on the underground feed to his house. The voltage on each leg spiked to upwards of 150+ and all the electronics in the house were fried. The screwed up part is that the underground is owned by the utility, they know the entire neighborhood is full of defective underground splices. They knew that each one would eventually fail and potentially cause significant damage to the customer. They not only refused to address the issue, they lied, and claimed that it wasn't happening. Eventually a line crew showed up, repaired the problem, and told the customer that he was lied to, to avoid paying $7K bill for the damage the electric co. caused.