- #71
RedX
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rcgldr said:In most places in the USA, the neutral wire is center tapped from the last step down transformer, and it's not grounded directly, but is supposed to be within 10 volts of Earth ground due to grounding at previous transformer stages. In my home I see .3 to .5 volts between "netrual" and the actual grounded 3rd pin on the 110 volt outlets in my home.
According to this picture at hyperphysics:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/imgele/gfault.gif
the neutral wire is grounded at the centertap, and to the same "neutral tie block" as the ground wire.
I agree that it makes no sense. We've already established that 10V is not dangerous (touching the terminals of a car battery), so why not just connect the ground wire to the neutral wire instead of driving a pin into the ground to connect to the ground wire? Can't you just connect the ground wire to the neutral wire instead?