What happens when electric neutral cut/disconnected? (2025 Update)

replying to N8N, Jim Murphy wrote: To my knowledge, the house service is fed three wire, two hots one neutral. In the meter panel, the ground connection and the neutral from the street end up getting tied together in the meter socket. Any inbalance in the load returns to the source, in this case, the transformer hung at the pole or wherever. So if you lose the neutral, you may or may not even notice it depending on where the neutral is open, and if you have a decent ground or not but yes, houses have burnt because of this especially when things like a refridgerator get 240 volts instead of 120. Code up here is two 8 foot ground rods driven 6 feet apart. This ground goes into the meter box and ends up tying on the same grounding block as the street neutral.

Those ground rods may be great worm chasers but they are pretty much useless for getting return current back to the transformer. Rods are considered the weakest form of grounding electrode. The last time you could lose a neutral without having serious problems was when we had an all metal water distribution system. (used as the ground electrode)

it depending on

This is an illustration of what actually happens. Ground rods do virtually nothing for return current. It shows a guy getting shocked and the voltages at different distances.

replying to S. Barker, Min wrote: Excellent description of your event. My brother had the same problem with his house. Since, current was going through the grounding electrode the basement bathtub faucet was live.and can gave you a little shock. I found the green colour corroded ground (neutral) termination next to the overhead service mast. After one polite phone call to Toronto hydro as a home owner they came over with a crane to fix the problem. Just remember to be polite and reasonably technical if you are not an electrician when calling the utility as they can easily send you to a third party for investigation.

replying to gfretwell, Skyline137 wrote: I have a detached garage with a copper water line from my main house separate electric service and meters in each with as I said 60 foot copper from house to garage. A tree took out house electric line. Power remained on but neutral was pulled out inside meter box. It was that way for a month. I left it because it was buried under tree and snow still connected. When I called power company they exposed open neutral inside meter box. I never had any idea everything worked perfectly in the house.

It sounds like you were using the copper water line for the neutral. Back in the olden days when plumbing was all metal, lots of things could slip by unnoticed. It wasn't until the 80s that you couldn't ground an outlet by tagging a cold water line. I know it was still in the code in 75 but I never tracked down exactly when it changed. These days with so much plastic plumbing, you can't use a water pipe as your only ground.