alt.energy.homepower

On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 06:23:59 -0700, Dim wrote:

>Hi All,
>I am in a house that was build a while ago and doesn't have earth wire
>in all sockets. What's more, sockets which do have it do not provide
>pretection again equipment connected to them buzzing my hand or foot
>when I touch it.
>I got down to testing stuff and run into a lot of questions...
>
>1. There is a lightning protection on the main power switch board...
>Would it influence the connectivity between Neutral and Earth?

It shouldn't.

>2. There is a power between Neutral and Earth wire. Is it normal?
>3. There is a 15-20mA flow between Neutral and Earth wire. Is this
>normal?

All perfectly normal.

I bought a 100 year old apartment building when I lived in PA. It had knob and tube
wiring in the walls which had been snipped off under the floor and wire nutted to
Romex back to the modern breaker panel installed in the basement. All outlets were 2
wire.

I wanted three wire outlets for obvious reasons but was not willing to rip out all
the (real) plaster to rewire. My solution was to run a girdle of #8 wire around the
building at about outlet level. It tucked nicely up under the vinyl siding that a
previous owner had installed.

At each outlet box I drilled a hole through the back of the box and through the wall.
I ran a ground wire from the new three wire outlet through the wall to the wire
girdle where I bonded the two together with crimp fittings. The girdle was connected
to the breaker panel's neutral/ground bus and to a ground rod that I drove at each
corner of the building.

Ceiling fixtures were grounded via a wire run across the attic, through a hole in the
wall and down under the siding to the ground girdle.

This provided a very excellent grounding system at minimal cost.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address

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