Home Wiring

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mneary said:
I own a house with knob-tube wiring (1890's) and all connections (that I know about) are in junction boxes.
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Its amazing what you find in old houses When I was younger, I spent a summer working with an electrician. The micky mouse stuff I saw
I remember one garage attatched to a rental house where somone needed an outlet where there wasn't one. They hacked into some Romex part way up the wall that went to a light. No box, NOT EVEN ANY WIRE NUTS!!!! they had twisted and carfully bent the wire so they woudn't touch. I wish I would have taken a picture.
 
A lot of luck and the fact that no serious conductors (aside from human beings) ever touched the pipes to a ground, and the humans were well insulated. It's a metal finishing plant, so elbow length PVC gloves are the norm, you only get a tingle when your gloves get wet enough or a hole in them to provide enough conduction to feel it. I spoke with the electrician that came in afterwards to fix things, said he'd never seen anything like it in his life, and never wanted to either.
 
GREY ..... thats the grounded conductor in U.S (neutral) and mneary if your home is knob & tube then unless you re wired all your connections are taped and soldered (which is fine) but the only junction boxes you will see are either in the basement or attic where they tapped romex to the K&T to make it look good.. K&T is just a hot and a neutral wrapped through a home and tapped where theres a switch/outlet or fixture, never protect it more than 15Amps and dont use it for heavy kitchen loads either, run a few 12-2's to your countertops for appliances etc.....
 
You shouldn't use the term grounded conductor when refering to the neutral line, as it's usually a power station ground, not a local one, and almost always has some voltage relative to the local ground.
 
In the US, neutral and ground are bonded together at the service entrance; usually where the circuit breakers are. Neutral also is supposed to be grounded at the transformer (pole).

Neutral should, under non-failure conditions, have a very small voltage to ground. It should be the voltage developed in the neutral line, between the bonding point (service entrance) and the load.
 
In most power distributions the neutral is a earthed locally but is only earthed at one point - where it enters the premises.
 
i would HIGHLY reccomend using solid gauge. It goes through the perf board holes much easier and less difficult to solder. Stranded wire can bend and break off easier. Also, soldering stranded wire makes it fan out and increases the difficulty. you then have to remove or pry it off other unintended connections.
 
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Dean Huster said:
If you arrange six pennies around a seventh, you'll see why there's 7 strands for the smaller gauges.

Dean
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Thia is an excellent, simply put, explanation . An analogy to atoms perhaps . I am wondering how many atoms are in the first shell ? 8 wasn´t it So is this suggesting the proton is just a bit larger than the eight electrons circling it or do you reckon they are all going different ways? Or maybe they just fit in that spherical shell with their own magnetic fields holding all the others in place - interesting
 
hi
well i know what you wants to know, actualy the reason behind using different copper strands, well u have noticed that where ever the DC voltage is present u will see a solid conductor whose diameter depends on the amp the system needs , higher the amps need diameter will be greater, but in Ac power system we uses a wire consists of different copper strands as of losses and is better for long distance, there are some losses due to sine wave of AC , to minimize these losses we uses different strands instead of one . In DC the voltage is constant so dont need to have different strands.
 
That sounds like a weird explanation of skin effect. Also, why add this seven! years later?
 
Mashhood Ali Did you look at the date stamp on this thread? The last post was over 7 years ago, and the original question was asked over 10 years ago! Few of these members (if any) are even still here!
 
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