re a question about vac outlet wiring in article apr ecsvax uncecs edu crisp ecsvax uncecs edu russ crisp writes i m considering modernizing some old wiring in my home and i need a little advice on outlet wiring several outlets are the old two prong type without the ground naturally the wire feeding these outlets is without the ground wire i noticed at the fusebox that some circuits have the with ground and that on these circuits the ground wire was tied to the same bus as the neutral white wire so here s my question it seems to me that i d have the same electrical circuit if i hooked the jumper from the neutral over to the ground screw on new three prong grounding outlets what s wrong with my reasoning here no no nooo the ground green wire is for safety no current is supposed to flow in it under normal conditions this means that there s normally no voltage drop in it either it is supposed to be safe to touch the ground wire even if you re grounded in some other way at the same time the neutral white wire is as dave vanderbyl correctly said the return for the hot wire since current flows in it there s a voltage drop if you plug a heavy load into a properly wired grounded outlet you can commonly measure a volt or so of difference between neutral and ground they are supposed to be connected together at the breaker panel but nowhere repeat nowhere else well almost there are strange exceptions for things like sub panels what you can do if you want three prong outlets without additional wiring is to use a gfci outlet or breaker but the outlet will be cheaper in fact depending on where you are putting your new outlet s a gfci may be required there is a faq on electrical wiring posted regularly to rec woodworking and news answers it goes into great detail on these issues including gfcis and you should probably read it before asking any more questions i ll mail a copy to you append a copy here and will ask the writers to cross post it here in the future jamie hanrahan kernel mode systems san diego ca internet jeh cmkrnl com uucp uunet cmkrnl jeh cis
