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Milly-Paul, I was pretty surprised at the turn-out in reply to Patrick's problem. Maybe too much reply, bury him under advice. I got busy last year putting lighting and outlets into attic, and adding lighting and outlets to those already in a sidehouse where our dryer is. As I was fixin' to get to work, had a looong e-mail exchange w/fellow VOA retiree about the National Electric Code. Most specifically the difference between neutral and GROUNDING wire (green) that connects to round hole on the typical three-wire. Bought a good copy of a textbook on NEC code and set to read up (what do most folks do with a book?). Surprised at what was said about neutral and GROUNDING wire. Never mix the two. Grounding wire should never conduct current except in event of a fault. Ever. Then it conducts big fault current back to neutral/ground (joined at service entrance) and offending black wire trips breaker big time. No doubts. For me, I want solid ground for radio stuff. Ground rods won't do generally because ground resistance is so high. A 4-foot ground rod may measure 500 ohms with reference to solid earth ground. Water system is more and more PVC, so no longer good for grounding. Gas pipes few here in town. Mostly bottled LPG. Where gas pipes are available, they are forbidden for use for grounding purposes. Lord, stay away from that gas pipe. One spark can send you and your neighbors to your reward FAST. Alternative: use neutral for grounding receivers and such? No can do according to NEC. Only alternative is rewire house for four wire (three+green). Expensive and you can guess what else. Charles Milspec390@aol.com wrote:
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