Assault with battery

[the mojo hobo]

USA 3 prong, 110 hot, neutral, earth.

Everywhere I've ever lived the neutral and earth are tied together in the service box. The house I'm in now, built in 1942 has mostly 2 prong ungrounded outlets and I don't see the point of replacing them with 3 prongers (and grounded wire) when 2 of the prongs are tied together at the box. There must be a reason for it though.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Everywhere I've ever lived the neutral and earth are tied together in the service box.

Then they are wired incorrectly and the codes inspectors should never have signed off on them. The ground is supposed to be a literal "earth" and tied to some form of buried conductor. It's supposed to be an electrical 'emergency safety' to conduct shorts away from the power circuit and into the ground, literally, the ground. This will cause a massive rise in current which will trip the breaker or blow the fuse, which is what they are designed to do. If the ground is tied to neutral, what you have is a two prong ungrounded system regardless of how many holes there are in the outlets. This is a safety hazard because it can allow a large voltage potential to develop separate circuits, and if you use two appliances that are on two circuits, you'll wish it was only as bad as microphone shock on badly wired stages. It is potentially fatal. It will also make your wall power much noisier for any audio/video equipment. Even though their power supplies are designed specifically to filter out ALL variations in current, AC, you'd be amazed how much noise actually gets through.

 It's not even hard to convert most two prong wiring schemes. However, it's not an absolute necessity. My house was built in 1950 and added on to in 1974. The new part has grounded outlets. The old does not. Older homes with two prong can pass codes inspection upon sale because if there are no problems noted by the inspector or the in the history of the house, the system is presumed to be safe and is grandfathered in, but ALL new houses must have a true fully grounded power system.

[PhilT]

It's to everyone's credit that this thread deviated into wholesome discussion of household wiring and not more stimulating domestic equipment using batteries. Well done.

[uwe]

Yes, for once we did not dildovate and everything was orefice-safe. That said there was only recently a death in Germany (no joke) when someone felt inclined to penetrate an extension socket, no doubt in search of more vitality and added electrons and after having seen another one of this idiot's vids. An electri-frying experience indeed.

Mental note: What feels interesting (some might think) on the tongue with a 9 volt battery must not be thoughtlessly assumed to work with another organ and a 220 volt (actually, since 1987 it's more 230 volt in Europe as the new standard) electrical socket. At least not for long.

[the mojo hobo]

The ground is supposed to be a literal "earth" and tied to some form of buried conductor. It's supposed to be an electrical 'emergency safety' to conduct shorts away from the power circuit and into the ground, literally, the ground. This will cause a massive rise in current which will trip the breaker or blow the fuse, which is what they are designed to do. If the ground is tied to neutral, what you have is a two prong ungrounded system regardless of how many holes there are in the outlets.

That makes sense. When we bought the house our insurance agent said we couldn't get insurance unless we replaced the plug fuses with a breaker box, which we did, and the city even ran new wires from the pole.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Fuses aren't inherently any different than breakers; they're just single use only. The new lines from the pole were larger gauge wires to carry the higher current load of modern houses. A typical residential service is 400 amps, IIRC. In the 40's and 50's, it was less than half that. When my aunt died three years ago, her house right across the street from mine and slightly newer, had fuses, but they didn't have to be replaced. However that requirement can vary from city to city.

[Dave W]

100 amp service is standard around here. I had to upgrade from 60 to 100 in the house I bought last year b/c I added central air. That's with an electric range and dryer, and I could change from a gas to electric hot water heater and still be okay under code (NEC). You can still find older houses around here with 30 amp service, these have gas ovens and dryers and no a/c.

[gearHed289]

Don't end up like this guy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mydT7WzQxoM&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fresults%3Fsearch_query%3Delectrocuted%2Bon%2Btrain%2Bindia%26aq%3D1%26oq%3Delectrocuted&has_verified=1

[dadagoboi]

100 amps seems the bare minimum around here for residential,  A/C rated 50 amps, range, dryer,etc.

I put a 60 amp box in my 18 x 20 shop.  Very often have 20 amps of lighting, 15 of router, 15 dust collection, 15 A/C and 15 of intermittent compressor all on at the same time on different circuits.

[uwe]

That does look nasty  , was it suicide?

[Highlander]

"Fry crisp and die"... that's an old one... just plain stupidity and not unusual... there are a lot of desperate people out there...

A lot of people consider the Indian train service to be suicidal just to use it... the sanitary systems are pretty archaic too (read pole-and-hole here) and has not changed in generations for most services... I know plenty of people who have first-hand knowledge of this...

There are some hot-climate countries that have to run earthing systems as they cannot rely on the water table for the return path...

UK now has "EURO-VOLTAGE" (God bless the EU) - Europe has almost exclusively ran at 220vac and the UK at 240vac so it was officially settled that they would standardise at 230vac 50hz

Most ships I've worked on have no neutral and run 240vac 60hz three-phase so you strap the equipment across any two phases... no earth...

Our house is on a 60amp fuse and like most UK properties rely on "diversification factors" to avoid overloading the system...

[uwe]

To quote the late Queen Mum, never one to mince words, a slice of personal benevolent colonialism: "Things haven't been going very well there since we no longer take care of these poor people."