Ground And Neutral Puns

Hello,

I’m trying to replace a light fixture in my house. To make things complicated, I took the old fixture down a long time ago and forget how it was connected (the old fixture was a newish, cheap, single-bulb fixture). The new fixture I want to connect is new, more expensive, and has two bulbs, so it has two blacks, two whites, and a copper ground.

The ceiling connection is what confuses me. It’s pictured here. When I hold up my new fixture to the ceiling and touch the black on the fixture to the white in the ceiling, and the white on the fixture to either the white bundle or bare bundle, the fixture lights up.

1. Is that normal?
2. How can I tell for sure which bundle is the ground and which is the neutral?

Thanks!

maybe they could hold it at Old Trafford

I live in India and I have a very limited knowledge about electricity, So forgive me if my phrases or explanation is difficult to understand.

Few days ago my PC started giving electric shock whenever I touch it so I assumed it must be a ground or earthing fault and called my electrician to check the earthing.

After doing few tests he said the earthing is not proper in the building(?) and he removed the wall socket where the PC plug was connected and cut the ground wire(green one) and connected it to the neutral and somehow it fixed it, my PC is no longer shocking me.

But I’m still skeptical, if my building doesn’t have a proper ground how come connecting the ground wire to neutral fixed it? And is to ok to use my PC now? If not what could be the real issue here and what can be done to fix it?

Hi,

Images: https://imgur.com/a/NbXxkFl

I was going to change out this outlet.

It was previously all shoved together in a back-wire type outlet (The kind you just stab in). Was going to replace with a new side-wire outlet, but wasn't expecting 6 total wires.

For now, I've just pig-tailed the 3 live wires together, & the 3 neutral wires together, so that the next several outlets down work (crucially, the refrigerator's outlet doesn't work unless these are all connected).

Couple questions:

• So I'd just pigtail in 2 more wires - 1 white wire to the 3 neutral wires, and 1 black wire to the 3 live wires, then connect those to single posts in the new outlet?

• Is this not...excessively crowded in that electrical box? Is that OK?

• Anything else I'm missing that means I'm going to burn down my house?

Thanks,

EDIT: Pigtailed - outlet works, as do the outlets down the line from this one. Thanks!

Ended up going to Home Depot to get red wire connections. Link And also some wire as I didn' thave any link. That wire you can split the sheath, and inside are a black wire, a white wire, and a bare copper one.

Then 'just' connect everything (after twistng the wires into the connector, I used pliers to twist it tighter), then shove everything back in. Fail. Try again, and done for now at least.

The A/C system that I've been working on has a disconnect box and 3 conductor with ground NM cable running into it. I suppose it was installed in the 70s? Maybe? At any rate, I opened up the box to replace the switch (which was busted) and noticed the neutral and ground are bonded together. The outside unit is entirely 240v and I'm going to disconnect and wirenut the neutral wire as per what has been suggested upon several searches. But in this specific instance, I'm wondering why this needs to be done? I have a guess but my brain doesn't know how to put it into words right now so I'll just leave it at that. I more or less understand the idea of why you isolate them in a sub panel and why they're isolated in 120v circuits (current would be using the ground wire to return along with neutrals) but not really sure about this.

Thanks very much for your time!

I have three AC outlets on one breaker that seem to stop working some mornings randomly. No idea why but all the appliances on this circuit will be off when it happens and comes back on randomly seemingly a couple hours later for no apparent reason. This never happens at night and only in the morning-to-noon time for what it's worth. Only appliances on this circuit are the fridge, microwave, and toaster oven. A trip to the breaker box every time shows the breaker is not being tripped when it happens. Itappened again today so I decided to take a voltmeter to to all three outlets to look for clues. Here are my findings

Outlet 1 which has only the microwave on it gave me weird readings. I get 30 volts when measuring neutral to ground, I get 60 volts when I measure neutral to live, and I get 120 volts when I measure from live to ground.

Outlet 2 and Outlet 3 have the same readings as each other but are different from Outlet 1. When measuring these Outlets I get 120 volts from live to ground, I get 0 volts from neutral to ground, but the weird thing is I get 0 volts from live to neutral when I should be getting 120 volts correct?

so I got these readings and they are different from a normal working AC outlet so there's something obviously weird going on with this circuit. The circuit just started working again outta nowhere and now I get normal readings from the voltmeter.

Can someone help me try to figure out what is causing these weird readings to happen outta nowhere? Is it a bad ground somewhere perhaps??

Hello all

I'm sure this is a simple question for most of you. Just to give a brief background, my new job is working as a commissioning engineer. Although I majored in electrical engineering, most of my work has been inspecting HVAC systems. However, I have recently started testing more electrical equipment. At the moment, this has consisted of transformers and electrical panels.

At work yesterday, an engineer was explaining to me the importance of taking voltage readings between ground and neutral. He said that when measuring voltage between ground and neutral, the reading should be 0 or very close to 0 volts. That way if there is a ground fault, you can get a high inrush of current at the panel to trip the breaker for the circuit with the fault. Is the reason you want the voltage between ground and neutral to be zero because it indicates very little resistance? I'm also confused about how a sequence in which a ground fault causes the breaker to trip. If anyone can explain that would be greatly appreciated.

Two more simple questions. The neutral wire is how electricity "returns" to the source. Does it return all the way to the generator/utility? Or just to the panel supplying the device.

And for ground, how come this wire only carries current in the event of a fault?

Thanks for taking the time to read this and respond.

Hi all, somewhat inexperienced electrician here, a little stumped. A bunch of neutrals and grounds in a house I just started on all went "bad" at once. Varying levels of bad, readings of 13V, 40V etc. that go away when circuit is properly grounded. We've got bad grounds/neutrals right? How does that happen on half a dozen circuits at once?

I ruled out the obvious stuff first: ground/neutral bars, breakers, connections in the panel. Next step is going to be to test resistance (I figure I should start near the panel) between every non-working box to figure out where the problem is. Short of checking everything individually, does anyone have any ideas what could cause this?

Extra details

- Voltage in panels is good, phase-phase, phase-ground/neutral bar, and each breaker, breaker connections are good.

- Grounding is good in panel, each wire in the ground bar is making proper contact and ground bar is grounded properly

Update!
- Hooked a wire directly into the ground bar on the panel and tested problematic circuits. All hots are fine, they all read 121-122V when taking the hot directly to the ground bar. Tested continuity for neutrals and grounds directly to ground bar, all fine, no resistance. Theoretically, Hot to neutral and hot to ground should work then, but they don't.

- Every problematic circuit was like this until I discovered one thing. There is a neutral that is hot! I didn't have time to trace it out, but this seems like it could be the problem. it was on the same phase as the hot that it shared a box with.

- I tested neutrals to ground and out of about 8 problem circuits, a few of them read 5 or 10V.
- One outlet that was not working the other day, but today it worked fine.

- Customer complained of problem starting after flooding in basement and water in walls
- Also a miswired 3-way switch, but I don't think this is related to the problem

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 52%. (I'm a bot)

> Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday is reportedly expected to approve a $5.5 billion expansion of the Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline, a move environmentalists warned would make an "Absolute mockery" of the House of Commons' vote to declare a climate emergency just hours earlier.

> The vote Monday night made Canada the third nation to declare a national climate emergency, but critics said purely rhetorical acknowledgements of the planetary crisis are meaningless without concrete action.

> Critics warned that approval of the pipeline expansion would represent a major blow to efforts slash carbon emissions to avert disastrous warming.

> Cam Fenton, communications and strategy manager for 350.org Canada, tweeted that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is "Out of line with a plan to meet a 1.5°C warming limit" by the end of the century.

> In a report published last October, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that warming beyond 1.5°C could spark a global and "Irreversible" climate catastrophe.

> In a statement ahead of Trudeau's decision, the Green Party of British Columbia said approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion would be "Reckless."

Summary Source | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: climate^#1 pipeline^#2 expansion^#3 Trans^#4 Mountain^#5

Post found in /r/worldnews and /r/ClimateCrisisCanada.

NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

The Nein have been tasked with arranging a meeting between the Bright Queen and King Dwendal, ostensibly to negotiate a ceasefire for the end of the war. I'm about 99.7% sure this will end in some sort of disaster, but let's set that aside for the moment, because there's a more important question: where should they meet?

Let's assume, for a start, that both Empire and Dynasty territory are off-limits, for obvious reasons; neither party is going to want to feel like they're walking into a trap. With those out of the way, here's some options:

• Nicodranas: Officially not allied with either side, although slightly closer to the Empire than the Dynasty. I actually think there's a potential option here, although it's going to take some convincing: Tidepeak, Yussah's tower. There's a convenient teleportation circle, it's technically not even entirely allied with the government of the Menagerie Coast, it's magically mysterious to prevent too much tomfoolery from either side, and Yussah is probably a dragon so he can fuck anyone up if things kick off. The hard part is going to be convincing Yussah to let everyone have the teleportation circle address, or to be involved at all.
• Uthodurn: Because just imagine if the Nein arrive through the teleportation circle in the Vellum Steeple with King Dwendal and the Bright Queen behind them.
• Tal'dorei: The Nein raised this with Allura, but she doesn't think it's likely - it's a long way to travel for both parties away from their seats of power, it's a separate sovereign nation, and on a meta level it's a Whole Thing for Matt to worry about. I actually think this would be a great option for all those reasons, but it feels unlikely.
• The Blooming Grove: Not easy to get to, but strong places of power for the gods make it a little less likely for Tharizdun's cult to be an issue, and it'd be nice to see how it's doing under Nila's care. Maybe some of Caduceus's family have headed back, if they're still alive?
• Rumblecusp: TravellerCon's in like 6 weeks, but why not make a head start? What could possibly go wrong?
• In the Dreadnought Chamber of the Happy Fun Ball: I mean, what's the point of having a weird network of extraplanar spaces inside an astral behemoth if not to freak out royalty?

Anyone have any other suggestions?

I have a power cord with line, neutral, and ground going to an LED driver. I have smart relay which I would like to use that only has line and neutral. Can I wire the line and neutral through the relay while having ground go from power cord directly to driver?

I've changed dozens of outlets over the years and I rewire them the way I find them and have never had a problem. This one was new to me.

Bedroom with 4 outlets. 3 were normal. Fourth had a jumper between an unused neutral and ground. I left it out to see if it was necessary, after which all four outlets showed open hot.

I replaced the jumper and all the outlets are testing normal (according to my 3-light test light).

I see all over the internet that a jumper between neutral and ground is no good. But I can't figure why it's necessary/working in this case and I can't find how to fix it.

If it's a safety situation I'll call in a pro asap, but please help me understand what's happening and what the fix would be.

Thanks!

Edit: It's a 3-wire cable, house was built in 1979. The top hot and bottom neutral are connected to hot/neutral.
Top neutral is jumped to ground. Ground screw also holds the ground wire.

SOLUTION: Just in case anyone happens by this post with the same issue, the problem was indeed an open neutral in the circuit but out in the hallway. The electrician found it after about 15 minutes. It happened when someone removed a hardwired smoke detector and didn't make a good connection on the neutral. It's fixed, mind is at ease, and I actually learned a lot about tracking such things down.

I regularly hear that neutral is referenced to ground, does that mean electricity is going straight to ground and is neutral even necessary? I also need negative on DC labeled GND, and wondered the same as above. Could you please explain this whole ground business to me. Thanks!