I think the culprit in this story is that the neutral or common lead from the mains transformer was disconnected. It's a center tap, and if it's disconnected, the voltage on one "leg" will depend on voltage divider action on whatever loads are present in the house. Hot water, refrigerator, poor vcr's... Bob M ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom" To: Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 3:13 PM Subject: Re: [EE:] Relocating house earth ground > At 02:45 PM 8/27/03 -0400, you wrote: > >Charles Craft said: > > > >> Am I gonna get popped when I take the clamp loose? > > Funny story about a house without a ground. > > I came home one day for lunch and turned on a lamp: FLASH! burned out. Not > unusual at all. Turned on another lamp: FLASH! burned out. Hmmm.... tried > lamp number 3 as a test: FLASH! burned out. Suspected something was up > with the power to the house. I went out the back where the service was > connected and while looking around heard voices in the back alley. Looking > over the fence, I saw a couple of local utility company trucks and 6 or 8 > linemen having lunch and a few beers. > > I got the attention of the foreman and told him what just happened. Long > story short, they had been working on the transformer that fed my house and > left the ground disconnected. Stuff in my house was now getting powered by > 220VAC instead of 110VAC. "Get off your asses and fix that line! And dump > those beers!" he suggested to the crew. > > Other than the 3 lamps, nothing else was destroyed. The only other things > on were the refridgerator and one or two clocks. > > If I had to move the ground on *my* house, I would leave the existing one > in place until I had installed the new one. And then have some meters > ready to test the result when I removed the original one. Have my beer > *after* I'm done. But that's just a guess.... > > Good luck! > Tom > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different > ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. > -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.