Originally Posted By: jcrandall This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
This has come up several times recently. 2 line + ground romex being used for a 220 line. They use the black and white as each of the hot legs… does not appear to have any neutral line.
Is there any appliance or acceptable situation that would not require a neutral line?
What is the risk/hazard of having no neutral or using the ground line as the neutral (depending on how they have wired it)?
Originally Posted By: Joey D’Adamo This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
To understand this, you need to look at how household power works. There are three wires that enter the house from the service. Two hot conductors and the neutral. The neutral comes from the centre tap of a transformer. The result being that the voltage from either hot to neutral is ~120v. Now, the missing peice of the puzzle, is that the other two conductors come from each end of the transformer winding. The result is that there is ~240v between them.
Try it. Stick a multimeter between both hots at a panel, and you should read 240v. So if all that the appliance requires is 240v, then you're fine with only the two conductors, plus the chassis ground.
