Angel Electric
Member
- Location
- OBX, NC.
I responded to a call about a customer getting shocked by a wire within a three wire range outlet. I was told that the breaker was off and yet the incident occured. My experience told me that the breaker could be bad. It wasn't. I checked voltage at the breaker as it was off yet still nada and then i went to the outlet and pulled it out of the wall to begin checking its reading again nada. However I noticed that someone had by-passed the equipment grounding conducter and used the nuetral that had been pulled in with the four wire circuit. So I began to think about current return paths and felt that the current could posibbly been felt by the customer by the bleeding off of other return current coming into the customers service and feeding backwards along the nuetral of the range circuit. So what I did was explain to the customer that they needed an up to date four wire outlet to accomodate the new style range they were installing. I further explained that by someone having connected the nuetral coming from the panel that essentailly they were getting a current to device chassity and equipment chassity ground fault. I realize I should have done more testing but the customer bit on the quickest suggested sollution, about the outlet needing to be changed so no furtheer testing was achieved . So question is, what is it more right to have the equipment ground hooked up instead of the nuetral . Pick this to pieces b/c I really should know the answer confidently but do not.