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Harper - Reinstate Monica
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Neutral is not ground. Neutral carries normal operating current. Ground is just a safety shield, and can't carry current if it's to do its job. Back at the service panel is a neutral-ground equipotential bond meant to keep all the conductors near ground (not floating at 4000V due to a transformer leak), and to provide a return path for fault current. Failure to understand this bond leads many to believe neutral and ground are interchangeable. Not so.

Bringing lazy to a whole new level

This is a metal conduit wiring method, where the metal pipe carries the ground for you. Easy peasy, ground is done! But this person was so lazy they couldn’t even be bothered bringing a neutral wire. They just misused safety ground for neutral.

Not bootlegging ground, bootlegging neutral.

They just left off the neutral wire. Neutral is jumped to ground to steal neutral from the grounded pipe.

Now, I work enough with EMT to know the pipe does separate from time to time. Under this disastrous miswiring, when this happens it will energize the pipe with 120V along with all equipment chassis, junction box, cover plate screw, etc.

Just throw a neutral wire in the pipe

All you need to do is throw a neutral wire in the pipe. And remove that jumper.

And you'll probably need to do this on every recep, lamp, disposal, dryer, range, and every other 120V load on the premises.

Harper - Reinstate Monica
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