Chuck Harris wrote:

Hi Michael,

Yep, that is yet another good example of why you shouldn't break the rules.

I could write all week, and still not cover all of the stupid dangerous things
that have happened with ground failures and grounding errors. The NEC
is the result of 100 years of experience with power distribution, and use.
Their collective authors have seen some of the most bizarre failures, and the
code has been designed to help prevent these types of failures.

It is rather unsettling to have a line cord catch fire in the bedroom
when your wife puts a piece of toast in the toaster oven in the kitchen.

And we haven't even broached the subject of what happens when your antenna
gets hit by lightning, and you have invited the ground currents into your
neutral circuits!

In case anyone thinks that losing the connection to the center tap (neutral)
at the pole pig is an unlikely problem. Bear in mind that virtually all
of these connections are to aluminum wire. The power companies make their
own rules. They don't have to follow NEC, they have their own code.
When they started using aluminum wire exclusively in the '60s,
they didn't think about the corrosion and cold flowing characteristics of
aluminum. The power companies use aluminum exclusively for all of the wiring
on their side because aluminum has the highest conductivity per pound, and per
dollar, of any known material.

After they gained experience with aluminum, and knew all about its problems,
I bet you think they went out, and upgraded all of the older connections,
right? Nope! They left them alone. Power companies are profit driven, they
didn't want to have to explain to their share holders why they would have to
shoulder a billion dollar loss to fix a problem of the power company's making.
So, they only fix the problem when *you* discover it.

-Chuck

After the hurricanes last year her in Florida they finally went through
the whole subdivision and replaced every splice in the secondaries, as
well as the 7200 volt primaries. I found a number of them on the ground
and it was amazing that I even had electricity. Between the corrosion
and the thermal expansion you could pull strands out of the crimps.
After they finished my line voltage went up 10 volts, and is a lot more
stable.
--
?

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida