And the problem now is: the outgoing hots and commons were all connected in the fuse box in unison with the hot and common coming in, which means now every circuit from that subpanel is now reversed. Except the one I worked on where I reversed the wires under the building, but still shows reversed in the fuse box (this is where colored electrical tape comes in). Since there is no ground, there isn't a problem, per se, but eventually I'll have go around with an extension cord plugged into a correctly grounded outlet and test the hots in the outlet with the ground in the cord and do what needs to be done.
Ahhh …. The joys of the older houses.
Sent: Monday, January 13, 2020 2:32 PM
To: DoIt_Yourself <DoIt_Yourself@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [DIY] Wire problem
Joyce aka Mom aka Joycie
FOUND THE PROLEM
Thanks for all your answers but the real reason was something not expected.
When the fuse box subpanel was installed, it was wired incorrectly: the hot and common wires were reversed: the common was hot and the black wire completed the circuit. So removing the fuse kept the common active (hot) and since there were other outlets on the line with things pluged in (TV on standby mode) there was return current on the black (used as common) wire which was connected to the other wire I was dealing with. That's why I was getting 120 volts on both wires but 0 between them.
From: DoIt_Yourself@yahoogroups.com <DoIt_Yourself@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of mike shoaf mike.shoaf@yahoo.com [DoIt_Yourself] <DoIt_Yourself@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2020 9:35 PM
To: Yahoo! Inc. <DoIt_Yourself@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [DIY] Wire problemYou are most likely sharing the neutral (grounded) wire between two fuses and the neutral may be broken or separated somewhere. If you took it loose to make your splice that is the break! The small fuse box is a sub panel so you may overload its feeder from the main panel... IT IS TIME TO UPGRADE YOUR ELECTRICAL SYSTEM FROM THE SERVICE AND PUT YOUR PUMP CIRCUIT IN A GROUNDED PANEL!!!
On January 10, 2020, at 7:21 PM, "Ron Johnson l0c0l0b0@hotmail.com [DoIt_Yourself]" <DoIt_Yourself@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
I am adding a pump to the crawl space under a building. The circuits are fuse, not circuit breakers. There is no ground in the original wires. I decided to tap into an outlet for the power to the pump. The fuse for that circuit is in the hall on a subpanel of 4 fuses that's controled from the main fuse box in a closet. I removed the fuse for that circuit before working on it.
When it got to the part where I had to pull the existing wires for one of the outlet, I found that the power was still on. So I taped up the hot side and immediately got zapped again. With my trusty meter, I checked the voltage on both wires with the muddy ground underneath: 120 volts on the hot and 120 volts on the common – but 0 volts between them. Somehow, when the fuse is put in, one of the wires drops out, giving 120 volts between them. This is the first time I've ever come across this. I have no idea how this would even happen.
Has anyone run into this situation? I may have to rerun the line from the fuse box, but I would rather not.
Posted by: Ron Johnson <l0c0l0b0@hotmail.com>
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