A friend asked me to look at his garage, which had no power. It’s a detached garage at the back of the lot. It has an underground feed from the panel in the basement of the house. I found that the hot wire coming into the garage was good, but the neutral was broken between the garage and the house, and we couldn’t pull the wires out of the underground pipe. My electrical skills having been exhausted at this point, I told him he should get an electrician to fix this one. So he has an electrician come out and the guy ends up putting a ground rod on the side of the garage and hooking the neutral to that. I know this is the wrong way to run a neutral, but is it really dangerous? I’m looking for some worst case scenarios so I can convince him to do it the right way, trench the yard and lay a new line in the ground. Thanks
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Replies
It's all wrong. My guess is
It's all wrong. My guess is that it won't even work well because the resistance of the ground is higher than the the wire would be, and there are safety hazards also.
I'm wondering if the
I'm wondering if the "electrician" used the (presumed) metal conduit as the neutral?
I'd have it inspected by the AHJ, presumably get my money back from the "electrician" and do it the right way with a newly installed feed
Yes, it's wrong, and
Yes, it's wrong, and dangerous. If he's relying on the ground to supply neutral current then in dry weather you'll experience severe voltage drop -- enough to damage any motors running on the circuit. If (more likely) he's using the old ground wire for neutral and the new ground rod for ground then there is a significant shock hazard introduced.
>>..... the right way, trench the yard and lay a new line in the ground.<< That would be the right way. DanH supplied a worst case scenario. What a dandy opportunity to upgrade the service in the garage - you are going to be trenching anyhow, add a conduit with 4 appropriately sized conductors and a new sub-panel! The hardest part is always the digging.... Jim
A real (with a license) electrician did this?
Joe H
Are you sure that's what he
Are you sure that's what he did? Or was there an unbroken ground conductor that he repurposed as a neutral back to the service, and the ground rod was to ground the subpanel in the detached building. That would make more sense.
But still wrong and dangerous.