Electrical question? - Page 2 - RC-Monster Forums

JERRY2KONE · **Local electrician -** 09.20.2012, 01:15 AM

A local electrician will not do me any good. Trust me they will be so confused by this microwave and treat it like black magic. They are confused by their own power system, and are very reluctant to assist with anything that they do not design. All of our maintenance support staff are local hires.

hemiblas · 05:52 PM

All homes in the US and all commerical buildings have the neutral and ground interconnected at the main switchboard or main panel. This is also the only place they are allowed to be connected per the national electric code. Downstream of that if you have distribution panelboards they remain separate with separate ground and neutral busses in each panelboard. 240V single phase motors do not need a neutral to run(regardless of ampacity), generally we provide 2 hots(one from phase A and one from phase B) and a ground. The only reason you might have a neutral to an ac unit is if it had a screen of some sorts and a stepdown transformer from 120V to 12V were required. Then you would need the neutral to get the 120V, otherwise a neutral is not required for a motor.

bruce750i · 09.29.2012, 09:18 AM

That microwave was not intended to be used this way. Insurance will love it when it burns down the office. Just like our hot wired server power supplies.

JERRY2KONE · 09.29.2012, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bruce750i

That microwave was not intended to be used this way. Insurance will love it when it burns down the office. Just like our hot wired server power supplies.

Yea I hear you. But this is not a personal home insurance situation. This will be in a US Gov office building in a foreign country. We have some local hire electricians who state that this will work, and that they have done this before without any issues. This is why I am asking these questions. The office is a stone/cement building built about 500 years ago with walls that are about two to three feet thick. The only wood is the new cabinets I am having installed. I just finished building the 17 cabinets today. Plus being a US Federal office it has installed sprinklers with a state of the art detection system. I'm not worried about anything on that level. I am more worried about them buring up a brand new appliance worth nearly a grand.