Not true. That's the third (bare) wire coming into the house. It's both ground and neutral. It is then tied to both the ground and neutral busses in the box. Usually there is one power pole somewhere on the block that has a wire from this common to a copper grounding rod. At least that's what I found when I replaced my fusebox (and with the aid of a licensed electrician). When we had the tornado come through north Minneapolis we had lots of issues with houses that lost their wired grounds and the journyman electricians were getting injured because the power pole grounds were all torn out. --- Wayne Johnson, | There are two kinds of people: Those 3943 Penn Ave. N. | who say to God, "Thy will be done," Minneapolis, MN 55412-1908 | and those to whom God says, "All right, (612) 522-7003 | then, have it your way." --C.S. Lewis >________________________________ > From: Eric Crist <ecrist at secure-computing.net> >To: Wayne Johnson <wdtj at yahoo.com>; TCLUG Mailing List <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> >Sent: Friday, January 4, 2013 12:15 PM >Subject: Re: [tclug-list] power > >Power companies, in my experience, don't provide a ground from the utility. >----- >Eric F Crist > > > >On Jan 4, 2013, at 12:13:16, Wayne Johnson <wdtj at yahoo.com> wrote: > >> Most likely you have a bad ground since you obviously have power. Grounds are important on PC equipment in that they help remove stray static electricity. Check the rest of your house and see if you have the same or if it's just that plug. >> >> If it's the whole house you have a big safety problem. House wiring (at least for recent codes) need 3 ground points. The power companies ground, a copper stake in the ground, and a water pipe. Loss of any of these is a issue, especially since thieves have been stealing the ground wires off the power poles for the copper. >> >> >> --- >> Wayne Johnson, | There are two kinds of people: Those >> 3943 Penn Ave. N. | who say to God, "Thy will be done," >> Minneapolis, MN 55412-1908 | and those to whom God says, "All right, >> (612) 522-7003 | then, have it your way." --C.S. Lewis >> >> From: gregrwm <tclug1 at whitleymott.net> >> To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org >> Sent: Friday, January 4, 2013 12:21 AM >> Subject: Re: [tclug-list] power >> >> plugged in a tripp lite. says "line fault". arrg. poor defenseless mobos. >> _______________________________________________ >> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >> tclug-list at mn-linux.org >> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >> tclug-list at mn-linux.org >> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20130104/9e177825/attachment.html>