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glacier??</title></head><body>
<div>At 08:50 -0700 24/7/09, Todd Cory wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial">I have heard that this
requirement (to bond negative to ground) as well as bonding one of the
AC conductors to ground (neutral wire) was pushed through by wire
manufactures and unions. The wire manus sell more of their product and
the electricians get more labor in installing them. I also agree that
grounding any live conductor actually makes the system less
safe.</font></blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>My understanding is that it saves cost to ground one of the
conductors. Then you can use single pole switches, fuses and
breakers. If both of the circuit conductors are 'hot' then you
will need to use double pole everywhere.</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font
face="Arial"><br></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial">When I have traveled
over seas, I always try to open the main panel to see how things are
laid out. They never associate one of their power conductors (usually
240 v) to ground.</font></blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>Here in the UK there is no need to ground the neutral in the
panel. It has already been done by the utility at the
transformer. With the result that a lot of electricians think
that neutral is in some way intrinsically grounded and the hot wire is
intrinsically hot. They don't know about making their own bond
on a stand alone system, and start digging bigger and bigger holes in
the ground instead. Hoping for a better ground...</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>You can test whether the neutral is grounded quite easily with a
multimeter. I believe that everyone does ground it.
Everywhere that I ask it turns out that it's been grounded. Here
we lately have a new wiring system called Protective Multiple Earthing
where the ground and neutral are combined into one wire (saving on
cost). This has the interesting side effect that the whole house
will become 'hot' in the event of a failure of this one
conductor.</div>
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<div>Hugh Piggott<br>
<br>
Scoraig Wind Electric<br>
Scotland<br>
http://www.scoraigwind.co.uk</div>
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