NEC specifies the type of fittings to be used with aluminum--some are rated for both copper and aluminum, some for just one or the other, and there are special wire nuts for interconnecting the two.
You misunderstood....They said the insurance company won't deny a claim for said wiring.....refusing to write a policy or canceling a policy is not the same thing......I had a insurance company cancel my policy after insuring my
100yr old house for probably 50years (20years with me with never a claim).... for not replacing my roof on their schedule instead of mine....nearly dying, surgery, serious health issues and related financial impacts etc. wasn't important to them at all. I figure the company bean counters decided humble "old houses" were not a market they were interested in anymore......I had another company refuse a new policy based on a some remaining knob & tube wiring in my attic.....Rod
I see your point.. but everything in life is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Driving a car, using a saw, cooking, and even walking across a parking lot has some danger. However, if someone gets a decent book explaining how to wire (or has someone teach them), wiring is not any more dangerous than many other activities.
You may know more of the finer details of wiring than I.. but again, common sense says that you use a 20A recepticle on a 20A circuit.. Sure you might be able to get away with mismatching sometimes, but someone like me can just match the numbers and be safe. That way I don't have to know the answers to all the questions you pose.
No offense, but it is a common thing to see people overexaggerate the dangers of adding their own circuit, outlet, light, or whatever and call an electrician for even trivial things. It's not rocket science or as complex as some make it out to be.
No offense taken. You're right, it's not as complex as some make it out to be (and I hope I haven't seemed to be in that category!) -- but just the same, it isn't quite cut and dried, either. There *are* "gotchas" that can cause trouble. The biggest danger, IMO, is not the amateur electricians who don't know where the "gotchas" are -- it's the guys who don't even know that there
*are* any "gotchas".
You'd be surprised. Just had an aquaintance, who's not an unintelligent fellow, say - what difference does it make if I put a
15A receptacle on a 20A circuit.Renata
snipped-for-privacy@milmac.com (Doug Miller) wrote in news:CQZfh.9085$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net:
Then why is neutral abnd ground in the CB box the same thing electrically? Both are uninsulated blocks bolted to the case of the CB box?
At 60Hz, skin effect is not a consideration.
The main difference between a 15A and a 20A receptacle is that you can't plug a tool rated for 20 amps into a 15 amp receptacle (assuming that the tool has the proper 20 amp plug on it). A 15A recptacle isn't going to destroy the world or anything if it gets a 20 amp draw through it. Further, the use of 15A receptacles on 20A circuits is specifically allowed by code.
Because they do share a common point electrically--namely at the bonded junction in the main load center (and nowhere else). There, however, the similarity ends. The neutral is a current carrying leg of the circuit. It is a fundamental electrical requirement of the circuit. Without it the circuit will not work (120V circuit--there is no neutral on a 240V circuit). The neutral has to be the same size conductor as the hot, because it is the return path of the circuit and carries current.
The ground, on the other hand is not designed to carry current in normal use. It is a safety wire (so to speak) that is designed to bring the equipment to earth potential in the event of a failure of some sort which would cause equipment cases or chassis to become energized with line voltage. The next step in the process should be the tripping of the breaker, and in a GFCI circuit almost assuredly will be, but the ground's primary function is to bring the case or chassis to earth potential to mitigate shock hazard.
You would be so much better off thinking of a neutral as a return path (very analogous to the other hot in a 240V circuit). It's able to reside in the load center at the same potential as the safety ground solely because of the design of the Edison circuit (center tapped transformer at the pole).
The purpose of the ground wire is to ensure that the metal chassis of any device so equipped is always at the same potential as earth ground. If it were not, any fault that might occur inside the equipment could cause the chassis to become live; any human being touching that chassis could then provide an alternate path to ground for the fault current. Current flows in the ground wire *only* in the event of a fault. Under normal operation, it carries no current.
The purpose of the neutral wire is to conduct current from whatever device is using it, back to the service entrance panel and thence to the utility. Under normal operation, there *is* current flowing in the neutral wire (except, as noted previously, in the case of 240V circuits which don't have one).
The two are bonded together in the service entrance panel (note *not*not*not* "the CB [circuit breaker] box" -- any subpanel is a "circuit breaker box", and the two *must* be separate in a subpanel) to ensure that the neutral wire remains at the same potential as true earth ground.
Also, FWIW, the neutral bus bar in a typical panel is in fact insulated from the panel chassis, but also equipped with a bonding jumper of some sort that bypasses the insulation and connects the bar to the chassis. If the panel is used as service entrance equipment, the jumper remains in place. To use it as a subpanel, the jumper is removed.
snipped-for-privacy@milmac.com (Doug Miller) wrote in news:61bjh.36902$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr14.news.prodigy.net:
Not on my service entrance box aka CB box. The are both bolted to the frame of the box and are uninsulated.
You have a panel that's made to be used *only* as service equipment. In my experience, it's more common to see panels that can be used as either service equipment, or as subpanels, by removing a bonding jumper as I described.
DC also moves on surface of the wire because the free electrons all reside on the surface of a conductor. Solder can help by making that surface continuous all around the circuit.
DC cannot 'jump' across a gap unless it arcs. AC can, which is why 'blocking' capacitors prevent DC from flowing around an AC circuit.
WHAAAAATTTTT????!!!!!!
Crawl back into your nice, warm, furry faraday cages! Or at least get a clue!
Sorry; couldn't resists; must .. not .. feed .. the .. trolls.. must .. not .. ...
I think you are observing the difference between good enough and really, really, good..
You didn't even get close with either statement. Want to try again?
Your posted email address doesn't seem to work.
Would you care to email your comments to me?
Not at all. To see this, one only has to look at AC skin depth. As frequency decreases, skin depth increases. At 60Hz, skin depth is approximately 1/3", deeper than common wiring is in diameter.
AC does not pass through a properly functioning capacitor. Current charges and discharges the plates, giving the appearance of electrons passing through the gap but at no time do they do so.
Are we not discussing different aspects of the phenomenon? Isn't skin depth the distance below the surface of the conductor at which the electric field strength drops to some fraction of what it is at the surface of the conductor?
That is not the location of the free electrons that carry the current. They stay on the surface.
Agreed that the electrons per se do not jump across the capacitor. But if you have alternating current on one side of the capacitor you will also have alternating current on the other side. In that (non?)sense the AC jumps across, though the actual electrons do not.
Backpedaling I see.
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