John pretty well covered this in his post regarding separately derived systems.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the sum of two 120V circuits with a common neutral." In a residential 120/240V system, there is no reference to neutral for the 240V circuits, that is, the neutral doesn't factor into the circuit because if it did you won't have 240V - you'll have two 120V circuits. A water heater is a perfect example of this - you'll find a red, black and green wires going to it. No neutral (white). Across the red and black wires is 240V. The green is what's known as a hazard ground and provides a ground path back to the source in the event of a short to ground. Dan On Sep 13, 2014, at 11:50 PM, Mitch Haley <mi...@mitchellhaley.com> wrote: > Dan Penoff wrote: > >> If they are connected in parallel, the generator is wired for straight 120v. >> If they are wired in series and the common connection between the two is >> grounded and/or tied to the neutral, it's a 120/240v setup. > > While I've never seen one, the guy at the local motor and generator shop > warned me of generators which had 240v outlets that were not the sum of two > 120v circuits with a common neutral. He told me of a contractor who fed one > of the oddball generators into a breaker box in a new house that wasn't on > the grid yet, and in the process frying every 120v appliance in the place > including the furnace. > He told me that if I could run a light bulb off the neutral and a hot in the > 240v outlet I'd be safe to run a house on the generator. > > Now I'm wondering if the contractor had a four wire generator like my Husky, > and wired the ground to the panel instead of the neutral. On my Husky, the > ground wire is independent of everything except the external housing of the > generator, so you'd have wild 240 instead of twin 120 circuits if you didn't > bond the neutral wire to the panel. > > Mitch. _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner has no control over the content of the messages of each contributor.
