Garage electrical issue

[Sean]

Help...

I have a double breaker labelled as 50 amps that runs from my house to my garage by two 6 gauge stranded wires. It goes to a box in the garage that has 4 15 amp breakers in it, 2 on each leg. Each of the 6 gauge wires connect to each leg in the box. I have a grounding rod 6 feet in the ground as that is a far as it will go, must be rock below it, and the rod is connected to the neutral / common strip in the box.

Is this setup correct? I can measure 125V on each leg to ground, but once I put a load on one of the legs, the voltage drops to 70V and the other leg reads 180V, what is going on here?

Thanks much,

Sean

[Speedy Jim]

Not correct. They left a wire out when they ran the cable to the garage. The "ground" rod is not sufficient to act as a Neutral conductor.

Jim

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Ground or neutral? How many wired do you see coming into garage? Tony

[Sean]

There are two 6 guage to the garage. They come directly from the dual breaker in the house. Nothing else, so I assume I will need to run another 6 gauge for neutral?

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, And ground. Looks like some one half finished the wiring job. Went to lunch break and forgot to come back and finish? Tony

[Toller]

You need to add two wires; a ground and a neutral. And they all have to run through the same holes in metal. Good example of a floating neutral.

[ameijers]

I'm no electrician, and even I can tell this setup ain't kosher. Sounds like somone had a stone-age 2-wire setup for a 240v circuit (2 hots, one from each side of the house panel, using each other as the 'neutral'), to run a welder or something. They then tried to use it for 2 different branch circuits, which as you found, doesn't really work, especially with unbalanced loads.

My advice, and your insurance agent would agree- turned the 50-amp ganged breaker off, and don't use that circuit, until you rewire it all properly. If previous owner would do hillbilly crap like that, who knows what they did where you haven't looked yet? I'd have a pro go over all the house wiring.

aem sends...

[Beachcomber]

Agreed.... You have a dangerous situation there. The only applications where a neutral would not be present is in situations where only 240 volt appliances were used. But you would still need a hard-wire ground back to your main panel.

Beachcomber

[PrecisionMachinisT]

He forgot to install a transformer.

[Bud--]

2 options: Add neutral. Neutral bar at garage connects to ground rod and panel/ground bar (usually a screw in the ground bar). There can be no continuous metal connections from the house to garage.

Add neutral and ground. Neutral bar at garage does not connect to panel/ground bar. Ground wire from house connects to panel/ground bar and ground rod.

bud--

[glenn P]

Wow, to be completely honest with you - if you don't understand this situation straight away, you should hire an electrician.

Your situation requires a relatively simple fix, but asking a NG, when getting it wrong could mean your house may burn down isn't my idea of very smart.