Can a load center have a breaker as large as its main?

[Cookie]

Reminds me of the movie, My Cousin Vinny... and, only mrs. smith answer many fingers I am holding up! LOL.

there is a screw you know, lol. but, where o where is that little screw.

[jwelectric]

lol, nope, trick question. no black wire. chassis is metal and hanging bracket is metal, must be grounded. don't you have those dangly straps hanging from the back of your truck to ground it? lightning strips? lol

Well I have heard of this grounding before but have never been able to figure out just how to ground that CB radio in my truck as defined in the NEC. The word ground in the NEC means "earth" although all our lives we have called the negative post on our car batteries the "ground"

It is due to this mislabeling of the terminal of a battery as ground that has led us to believe that the ground in our panels means the same thing.

The ground rods we install at our services and remote buildings is to allow lightning somewhere it can get to the place it is seeking which is earth.

Just for the fun of it I am going to go outside and drive a rod at the front of my truck and connect the positive post to the rod. Maybe I will have a dead battery in the morning and I can call triple A.

[Chad Schloss]

lol yeah i know what the ground rod is for and I studied electronics in high school. I've worked on many things, even worked for sony as an electronics technician for 8 years. I get it I studied dc more than ac, and I am now just getting interested in this stuff again, especially the ac stuff. My dad was a master mechanic and I learned a lot about cars and 12v systems. One thing I remember him teaching me was that a car has 3 separate 'grounds' that must be all tied together. A chassis/frame ground, an engine ground, and a body ground, because those parts are all mounted in rubber mounts. It gets fun troubleshooting lighting circuits that fade and things do weird things they shouldn't when it is not properly bonded. It is strange that we call it a ground, and it is also strange that some call the positive terminal the hot side too, lol. It helps reading these forums when you actually want to gain knowledge. I learned this year about subpanel wiring, proper bonding practices, generator installs, bonding vs grounding, etc. some people need to open their mind to others viewpoints who are in the know

[jwelectric]

Just for the fun of it I am going to go outside and drive a rod at the front of my truck and connect the positive post to the rod. Maybe I will have a dead battery in the morning and I can call triple A.

Darn, that battery is not dead so I switched the ground to the other post to see if it will die

[leejosepho]

... I think you are out of your element here, not expert enough, and risking your life.

If you knew me more completely, you would not say that. However, I do not fault you for not knowing any better. I was baffled for a bit by the voltage readings I was getting just before I found the shorted black wire, but at no point was I ever truly in any great danger ... and all of the hoopla that has been going on here is simply because of certain word choices made during the discussion of the protection I had received while that wire was shorted. When some people cannot dazzle others with brilliance, they just try to baffle them with bullcrap ... and I was not buying it!

In relation to the discussion of CB radios and "ground" ...

The typical CB radio has a red wire and a black wire for power, and neither of those wires usually shows continuity to the chassis of the CB. Hence, at least certain "ground plane" antennas need for the CB chassis to be bonded to the vehicle body or "ground plane", and I learned about while installing this antenna on the roof of my house ...



The old charcoal grill turned out to be too small to provide a large-enough ground plane for that particular antenna to work well, but adding a ground wire from the dish back to the chassis of the radio did help a bit. So even with DC, a separate "ground" is occasionally needed even up in the air whether sitting on rubber tires or on rafters ...

... and no, I do not have to be concerned about lightning and that antenna since lightning comes out of the ground (or so I have heard) and that antenna is not bonded to earth.

[jwelectric]

So even with DC, a separate "ground" is occasionally needed even up in the air whether sitting on rubber tires or on rafters ...

... and no, I do not have to be concerned about lightning and that antenna since lightning comes out of the ground (or so I have heard) and that antenna is not bonded to earth.

Here in lies the area of your misunderstanding. You are using the word “ground” out of text as the CB does not have a ground at all of any kind as it pertains to the premises wiring of your home. The ground plane of an antenna for your CB has nothing to do with earth or even the chassis of the equipment. The ground plane for the antenna can even be the roof of the house itself as the ground plane is the reflection of the wave form back to the antenna not the connection to earth.
For the 120/240 volt circuits in your home the term ground means earth but with the CB the term ground as you are using it means connected to the chassis. The tern ground plane is the second half of the antenna. All three mean something different.

The mobile antenna you have on your roof is required by the NEC to be connected to your grounding electrode system in case lightning strikes but then again it is your equipment and home so I suppose you can do with it as you wish.

[leejosepho]

Here in lies the area of your misunderstanding. You are using the word “ground” out of text ...

No, I was just showing it needs to be spoken/heard within a given context in order to be understood at all -- much of this entire thread is about that -- and you would do well to stop talking about me altogether since I am not the subject of any thread here in this forum anyway!

The ground plane of an antenna for your CB has nothing to do with earth or even the chassis of the equipment.

My point was only that is has one, and that the word/term "ground" needs to be understood properly in order to understand that.

The ground plane for the antenna can even be the roof of the house ...

Not for that particular antenna. I actually even tried adding a spider-leg-looking ground-plane booster there, but that only made matters worse because my actual ground plane is so small. However, bonding/grounding/continuity-connecting that dish to the radio chassis after the booster had been removed did help a bit.

The mobile antenna you have on your roof is required by the NEC to be connected to your grounding electrode system in case lightning strikes ...

I am aware of the connection requirement, and I also remember the day people stopped placing lightning rods on houses because they seemed to be *attracting* lightning (such as when our own house caught fire in the '50s and my dad took those lightening rods back down the next day). Hence, I just leave it to the many overhanging trees around this house and the tall pines directly behind it to deal with the matter of lightening.

[jwelectric]

It is you Lee that I am talking to and your misunderstanding of ground is the subject to which I am addressing.

You repeatedly keep saying that you understand but in the same breath make the statements like this one;

of the protection I had received while that wire was shorted....................... and that antenna is not bonded to earth.

Here you are Implying that the ground rod gave you some sort of protection which is a false statement and then go on to make reference that the antenna is not “bonded” to earth instead of using the correct words which are, “the antenna is not grounded.”

By your own post you show a complete lack of understanding of the purpose of grounding an electrical system and sadly the unwillingness to learn. Instead of listening when someone is trying to explain something to you, you are doing everything in your power to prove just how much you do know which ends up to be little or nothing.

In a 120/240 volt electrical system the word ground means earth, nothing more and nothing less. The system is grounded for four reasons and four reasons only as outlined in 250.4 of the NEC. You or my protection from electrical shock is not one of these four. To give electricity somewhere to go is not one of them. Grounding is not a safety issue at all. A system would be just as safe with or without a ground rod ever being installed.

Safety in the system comes from the bonding to the system neutral in the service equipment with or without a ground rod ever being driven.

250.4 General Requirements for Grounding and Bonding.
(A) Grounded Systems.
(1) Electrical System Grounding. Electrical systems that are grounded shall be connected to earth in a manner that will limit the voltage imposed by [1] lightning, [2]line surges, [3]or unintentional contact with higher-voltage lines and [4]that will stabilize the voltage to earth during normal operation.


I put the brackets [] with the numbers in the text to show the four reasons.

[BobL43]

No, I was just showing it needs to be spoken/heard within a given context in order to be understood at all -- much of this entire thread is about that -- and you would do well to stop talking about me altogether since I am not the subject of any thread here in this forum anyway!


My point was only that is has one, and that the word/term "ground" needs to be understood properly in order to understand that.


Not for that particular antenna. I actually even tried adding a spider-leg-looking ground-plane booster there, but that only made matters worse because my actual ground plane is so small. However, bonding/grounding/continuity-connecting that dish to the radio chassis after the booster had been removed did help a bit.


I am aware of the connection requirement, and I also remember the day people stopped placing lightning rods on houses because they seemed to be *attracting* lightning (such as when our own house caught fire in the '50s and my dad took those lightening rods back down the next day). Hence, I just leave it to the many overhanging trees around this house and the tall pines directly behind it to deal with the matter of lightening.

Lee, you said early on in this this thread that you have Aspbergers syndrome. What I have read about that is that most people who have it are very intelligent, but just lack some social skills and are unable to "interpret" facial expressions or intonnations in spoken words. But this venue is all in writing. I don't think it is anybody's intention here to imply that you are anything less than intelligent, just unwilling to accept your mortality. People HAVE died from ground faults.
We are more concerned for your safety than you seem to be. Get the licensed electrician in to make it right. if you get killed after that, then you can sue him.

[leejosepho]

It is you Lee that I am talking to and your misunderstanding of ground is the subject to which I am addressing.

You repeatedly keep saying that you understand but in the same breath make the statements like this one;

of the protection I had received while that wire was shorted....................... and that antenna is not bonded to earth.

Here you are Implying that the ground rod gave you some sort of protection which is a false statement ...

Then please tell me where that shorted current went! Even your own statements here eventually said/implied/acknowledged ground rods delivering current to other ground rods such as the ones under transformers. If the current from that shorted leg in my workshop did not find that kind of path, then please tell me where it went! To say or to imply there was no flow at all is utterly ridiculous since there was no power available anywhere in that sorted circuit and I only felt a small tingle when I touched the panel. If you really want to find fault and bust somebody, then address the matter of the wrong assumption made about my EMT in the first response in this thread and the potentially-deadly suggestion my panel should therefore not be bonded. I have no complaint at all about the understandable error that had been made in that particular post, but I am alive today and able to be here interacting with you and others because the shorted current in my non-bonded panel found its way through some kind of "ground" of whatever definition and then back to a transformer or whatever else somewhere rather than through only me and on into the concrete floor and wherever it might have gone from there. Anyone who reads this thread carefully and thoroughly will see you ultimately confirmed what I had suspected had protected me from possibly-great harm, but it matters not to me whether you ever acknowledge that yourself.

Lee, you said early on in this this thread that you have Aspergers syndrome. What I have read about that is that most people who have it are very intelligent, but just lack some social skills and are unable to "interpret" facial expressions or intonations in spoken words. But this venue is all in writing ...

You are correct in your understanding of AS/HFA (High-Functioning Autism), at least as in my own case, and I actually often have to be careful in this kind of written venue since I am very literal-minded where other people are not always so.

I don't think it is anybody's intention here to imply that you are anything less than intelligent, just unwilling to accept your mortality. People HAVE died from ground faults. We are more concerned for your safety than you seem to be.

No, nobody is more concerned about that than I am. However, we do not all have the same approach to the matter.

Get the licensed electrician in to make it right ...

There is nothing that needs to be fixed! When the electrician was here a few weeks ago to take a look at what we need him to do at our service entrance, he saw only two wires connected in the feed going back to the workshop and he asked me what was the deal there. I explained how that had been done many years ago, and he was pleased to know I would get that matter corrected before he came back to do the service-entrance update ...

... and now I need just a little more help:

I ordered a PK4MB2LA "Back-Fed Circuit Breaker Retaining Kit" for the main breaker in my workshop panel, but that retainer is not the correct one for my panel and I cannot find what I *do* need. The panel I have is a QO612L100S, and it seems the only screw hole it has available for retaining a main breaker is on the left side of that breaker. The instruction sheet that came with that panel listed a part number for the retainer kit, but I no longer have that instruction sheet. So, can anybody here either straighten me out if I am missing something there or else help me find the retainer I actually do need?



Here is another QO retainer I can find ...

http://www.superbreakers.net/pk2mb.html

... but it does not at all look like what I need.

This page lists a PK4MB2HA ...

http://stevenengineering.com/pdf/45L...ter_QO_ACC.PDF

... but it does not have a picture of same to show whether the "H" in place of the "L" might mean "Horizontal" or whatever rather than "Left" (if that is what the "L" means).

[ballvalve]

Only thing Im getting here is the importance of wearing shoes when working. Especially on power. How many panels did JW troubleshoot barefoot and wearing a bathrobe?

[jwelectric]

Then please tell me where that shorted current went!

The basic rule for current flow is there must be a complete path for it to flow through. If you felt a tingle then current was flowing through your body.
Just because something is energized does not mean that current is flowing. What I said was that the second you touched the panel with the black wire touching the panel you became part of the path from the energized panel through the earth back to the transformer and the high resistance of your body added to the high resistance of earth is what limited the amount of current that flowed through your body. The ground rod played no part in the circuit.
Your body equal about 50,000 ohms of resistance
The earth between your feet and the pole about 500 ohms of resistance
At 120 volts this would equal about 2 milliamps of current or enough to make you get back quickly.

Being that there was no ground rod in the circuit between the short in the panel, you, the earth, and the transformer the ground rod had nothing to do with how bad you got hurt.

If the panel had been properly bonded there would have been a low impedance path back to the service and the breaker would have tripped and no current would have flowed anywhere.

[jwelectric]

Only thing Im getting here is the importance of wearing shoes when working. Especially on power. How many panels did JW troubleshoot barefoot and wearing a bathrobe?

None. Being that I do know the dangers of current flow when I trouble shoot in a live panel I always wear the proper PPE.
The four biggest reasons for someone getting hurt by electricity are
Lack of knowledge
Lack of experience
Distractions such as horse play, one’s mind on something else
Pressure to get the job done

[Cookie]

Lee, you are arguing with those who hold a masters and are professionals in their field. What more anyone say. I really think you should pay attention to JW's advice. If you don't, fine. Go about your business.

[jadnashua]

While DMMs are nice tools, they can give some hard to understand readings because they have such high input impedances...you can get some significant voltage readings in places you wouldn't expect them but have little ability to actually flow any current. It can get pretty involved to determine the actual path. ALso, with that very high impedance (many megaohms in most cases), there's a miniscule current flow (which helps to be able to take the measurment without distrupting the circuit under test in most cases).