Re: [APD] Aromat Ballasts Arrived

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

That's what I swas trying to say yesterday in my own sloppy way. You'd have to go back to the main box (the breaker box) and test from there with something that's the functional equivalent of the Neutral-Ground circuit in the GFCI.
 
Actually, if you're at the main box, you could disconnect the ground from the Neutral line in question and then test across the ground and neutral for voltage. If there's a cross, youd get a something other than near zero. Otoh, if the wrong wire is connected as ground at the socket without any cross connects between ground and neutral . . , well, you get the idea.
 
sh
 

----- Original Message ----
From: Jerry Baker <jerry at bakerweb_biz>
To: aquatic plants digest <aquatic-plants at actwin_com>
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2006 12:58:55 PM
Subject: Re: [APD] Aromat Ballasts Arrived


S. Hieber wrote:
> Actually not current per se, but an imbalance in the flow in Hot and Neutral. Since Hot and Neutral are 180 degrees out of phase with each other, if a sensor coil is put around them, no current will flow in the coil -- the hot and neutral, being equal energy, cancel out the field. But if imbalanced, current is induced in the sensor coil.
>  
> The Neutral Ground fault requires an additional energized coil to induce current in the hot and neutral before the sensor coil. If there's no leak, there's no flow induced in the Hot and Neutral since both are inside the same energized coil.

OK. I think we're talking about different things. I think you are 
talking about a device plugged into a GFCI with neutral and ground mixed 
up. In that case you will have a neutral-ground fault and trip the GFCI. 
What I am speaking of is upstream from the GFCI outlet. Where the 
neutral from the breaker box is attached to the ground on the GFCI 
socket, and the ground from the earth is attached to the neutral socket. 
There's no way to detect that that I can see, unless you test for a 
circuit between the neutral wire at the breaker and the neutral wire at 
the socket, but the GFCI can't do that. Am I missing something? Both 
wires lead to the ground, so there's no way to differentiate between 
them without actually testing from the breaker box.
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