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Excellent information.
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Another potential point for a break in the grounding of a water pipe is when/where the pipe enters and leaves a water heater. To reduce corrosion, water heaters often employ dielectric fittings where the water line enters and leaves the heater. Thus, the potential grounding of the hot water line exiting the heater becomes electrically isolated from the cold water line entering the heater. While the hot water line should never be used for a ground connection, there is always someone who thinks this would be OK. Jerry F. -----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Charles Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2024 5:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [7x12MiniLathe] SPEAKIN BOUT FUSES There are a couple of types of breakers in a nutshell thermal trip and magnetic trip. Both have specific purposes and characteristics. They do not however have arc over like fuses do. This is VERY carefully designed into them prevent this very type of failure. They do extreme testing during manufacturing process to insure this cannot happen. The stress testing for arc far exceeds its rating. I have worked as a Controls Engineer for over 35 years and actually worked for Schneider Electric at their plant that makes breakers I can tell you it would amaze you how much they put them through in testing. It is scary to watch sometimes! Also you always want to break the hot side of a circuit NEVER break the neutral. That is a violation of both NEC,CE, and NFPA regulations along with UL. You also NEVER should tie a ground wire from anything to a water pipe. I know they used to do this. BUT it is no longer allowed with good reason. THINK about it. Someone comes along and replaces a section of your metal pipe with plastic. This just happens to be between your ground connection and actual point the pipes leave the building and make contact with ground. You just lost your ground. That is WHY it is NOT allowed. Same as you always tie one side of the secondary single phase step-down transformer to chassis ground UN-fused and use it as neutral. If you put in sub panels AKA secondary panels a ground rod may be required depending on the circumstances at the panel. Better safe than sorry even if its not. It is never too expensive to be safe. Installing ground fault breakers in a panel are cheaper than plugs at point of use and protect the entire load of that circuit. You can even get the ones that protect for arc flash too but they can be a pain with larger electric motors especially brush types. The sometimes see the motor starting as a fault and will trip. But you can use a dedicated circuit if all else fails for your older compressors and things like that. ALWAYS REMEMBER MORE PEOPLE ARE KILLED BY HOUSEHOLD 120VAC THAN BY 480 VAC 3 PHASE EVERY YEAR. |
