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In my living situation, there is no ground wire at the building. There is a ground AND neutral bus in the breaker box, but it doesn't extend to this separate building, which I'm living in. I've got all my stuff plugged in, including my computer and monitors, heaters, soldering station, etc. Recently I noticed that when my socked-foot is on the concrete and I touch any bare metal on my computer case, I get a tingle in my finger. I also just noticed the same thing while soldering and holding the piece of solder. I know what this means, and I'm curious if it would be super dangerous to bridge the ground and neutral posts in the outlets together. I know they're linked in the breaker box, and all the receptacles in this building are on a single circuit breaker. I know it's not advised, but since modifications like adding a ground post or running a new wire to the main building aren't possible, would this solve the tingly-finger issue? I live in the US and there is only single-phase 120VAC out to this building.

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    If making the installation safe isn't an option that only leaves moving out or writing a will. Apr 2, 2017 at 10:29
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    Does the outbuilding have a subpanel with its own ground rod, or is it simply fed with branch circuits from the main building's panel? Apr 2, 2017 at 11:08
  • @ThreePhaseEel The separate building (garage) does not have its own panel or ground rod, it's fed by a live and neutral wire from the main panel in the house. There are actually 3 wires from the house to the garage, but it was for a two-way switch and the traveler wires have both been linked together in the house (with a wire nut, by me, to bypass the two-way switch), so effectively there's two identical live wires and one neutral. Apr 2, 2017 at 11:16
  • Is the feed to the garage a directly buried cable, or in a conduit? Apr 2, 2017 at 12:03
  • @ThreePhaseEel They are run through the air from the roof of the house to the roof of the garage. They go from the breaker box, through the conduit box in the house where there used to be a 2-way switch that I bypassed, then up through the wall to the apex of the house, then to the garage and directly into the switch and lights in the garage. Apr 2, 2017 at 23:57

2 Answers 2

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Based on further conversation.... this is an emergent condition that is trying to kill you. It hasn't succeeded only because the shock path to source is high-impedance and limiting current flow to below 10ma. (if you can feel it, it's at least 1ma). Naturally occurring impedances can change dramatically, so it could turn and kill you tomorrow.

You say your garage already has a ground wire that you've tied into. However since it is not tied back to the house, it is a "fake ground". It makes things more dangerous.

  • If a grounded device has a ground fault, that current is harmlessly shunted back to the main panel.
  • If an ungrounded device has a ground fault, it electrifies the chassis of that device only.
  • If a device plugged into a fake ground has a ground fault, it electrifies its chassis and every other device also plugged into that fake ground.

You have the latter situation and it's Very Bad. Any device in the garage could be the origin of the ground fault that is giving you these problems.

The right solution is twofold:

  1. Disconnect the fake ground from your receptacle(s). This will protect you from any rogue ground faults in other devices in the buildings. In this situation you are better off with no ground than fake ground. Beware: metal junction boxes and conduit can deliver "ground" to the yoke (bracket) of a device, make sure that can't happen!

  2. Replace that receptacle with a GFCI receptacle. This will assure any ground faults don't kill you and confine any ground faults to just what's plugged into it. So if only your devices are plugged into it, it's gotta be safe! Connect only hot and neutral to the GFCI. Mark the receptacle "no equipment ground"; it should come with some stickers. Don't hook anything to the LOAD side of the GFCI.

Let's go into the details in my original answer.

Tying neutral to ground makes things much worse!

Under ideal conditions, modern electrical wiring is done as an isolated system, with a safety shield. Without grounds, it should be the same, only without the safety shield obviously.

What's the deal with the neutral-ground bond in the main panel? That is only to bond the isolated system to protect it from ESD, lightning and ground faults. Never bond neutral to ground anywhere else - if the neutral wire breaks, neutral will float up to 120V, and that means, so will ground! We see people fry themselves this way on a regular basis.

No appliance anywhere should be leaking any conductor to its case. Not even neutral (as you propose) - because if you flip the plug over, or lose neutral, neutral becomes hot. The ground shield would help if it was there. A GFCI/RCD device would help a lot.

Get a GFCI

A GFCI receptacle or breaker will detect ground faults for you and shut off the power. Mostly it's useful as a diagnostic aid, "when I touch X, the GFCI trips" which tells you X has a ground fault. The GFCI doesn't care whether your building has grounding; it is comparing hot and neutral current flows and looking for current that has gone astray (e.g. through you).

Write yourself a get-out-of-jail-free card

Since you are leaving this behind, make sure you write a letter to the landlord advising him of defects in the garage wiring and the fact that you experienced tingling, shocks, whatever you did in fact experience, and that you did make an effort to reduce the hazard but that fixing it properly was impossible for you. Keep a copy of the letter, it is your get-out-of-jail-free card if anyone is hurt in the future.

If someone is hurt, the landlord's best defense is "I didn't know" and to pin it on anyone but himself. His lawyer will force him to viciously deny receiving the letter; he will claim you created the hazard. You want as much "paper trail" as possible to prove you sent it: at the very least a certified mail receipt, better sending a CC of the letter to the city's electrical inspector, and best having your own lawyer send it.


The rest of this advice applies to people able to modify the home at will.

Retrofit that ground!

Many people refuse to add grounds because they think they need to replace all their wiring. Now let's pause for a moment. Wires that carry your power ordinarily (hot and neutral) need to run together. That assures their magnetic fields cancel out and don't cause heating that starts a fire. However, this does not apply to ground wires.

So in the 2014 NEC, Code was revised to give you wide freedom to retrofit grounds. So you can just run the ground wire you need any way that is reasonable - including between buildings - and you don't need to follow the same route. The book says "Git r done"! And hardware stores sell bare ground wire, or you can take the insulation off Romex.

Don't parallel wires

Noting that you converted a pair of 3-way switches into non-switches, you should not have tied the two messengers together on both ends. Paralleling wires causes a lot of subtle problems. You should use one messenger or the other. The other wire should be capped off as a spare.

Gee, what would you do with that spare? Hum de dum... I can't suggest using it as a ground wire because we follow Code here and there's a Code requirement that ground wires under 6 AWG be natively green or bare, and not just taped green.

A ground rod to the building is not enough.

The grounding system has at least two purposes: One is returning natural electricity sources (ESD, lightning) to earth. A local ground rod on your building will do that fine.

The other is returning fault current to source (which is where artificial electricity wants to go). A ground rod in a remote building will not do that because dirt doesn't conduct electricity well enough to reach the ground rods in the main building. That is why you need to have a ground wired between buildings.

If you really need a lot of power out there

Since I assume the 3-way is a 120V circuit, you could really bump up the power out there and solve your grounding problem by putting a transformer in your outbuilding and creating a separately derived service. A transformer's isolation moots the ground wire back to the house, and requires a local grounding system (since this would then become a main panel).

However, this requires more education and a lot more respect for electricity than I have seen in OP. This stuff can kill you, and it's already trying.

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    Yup - definitely don't suggest using that spare wire as a ground ... ;)
    – brhans
    Apr 2, 2017 at 18:33
  • I'm not sure I would blame the PSU, it's brand new and only has this problem in this building. It's definitely not static electricity because I've tested it with the meter. That, and the fact that it's not just the computer but the soldering station as well. Apr 3, 2017 at 0:09
  • I did some testing and found out that the hot/neutral of the receptacle is wired correctly (that is, neutral is the left slot and hot is the right) but my ground is also giving a voltage, so my thinking is that somewhere in the old wiring of the garage, someone either accidentally or through stupidity, tied the live wire to the unused ground wire. What's odd is that only the plugs that I installed even have a ground, the garage is essentially on a 2-wire circuit, so I don't know how the ground slot could be giving any voltage at all. Apr 3, 2017 at 0:14
  • Wait. What?? Ground is not being brought over from the house, but there is this existing wire in the garage that you are using as ground even though you know it can't be a good ground!? <-- THIS. When you say stupidly... tied the live wire to the unused ground wire, stupidity not required, a ground fault in any device in the circuit would have that same effect. It would affect every device. Some ground faults leak just an amp or two, and wouldn't display on a properly grounded site. Unless it had a GFCI, and you should really be using GFCIs here. Not doing so is a death wish. Apr 3, 2017 at 1:44
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    Amended answer to address your latest info. Don't let this kill you (or the next tenant). Apr 3, 2017 at 20:05
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The answer to you question, is no. You should not, under any circumstances, connect the ground terminal of a receptacle to neutral. Doing so could turn you tingle, into an all out shock.

In fact, if you're feeling a tingle from your devices, you might want to make sure the neutral isn't already connected to the ground. If it's not, then your devices may be faulty. Under normal operation, there should not be current flowing on the exposed metal of a device.

My advice. Install a proper 4-wire feeder, or disconnect the power to the building.

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