Posted: 2/13/2019 1:59:10 PM EDT
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Poll to be posted momentarily.
I'm doing to educational credits for my license and decided I want to learn more about grounding specifically and electrical safety in general Let's see who's wrong. |
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Depending on there size of the wire, it will either melt the wire insulation and turn it into what is essentially a heating element until failure of the circuit or trip the breaker. So my answer is "not enough information provided". |
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Plenty of variables to figure out including the following:
1) Is the system grounded? 2) Conductivity of the dirt between the rod you would energize & the grounding electrode & electrode wire at the panel -distance will affect this -moisture & dirt type will to 3) Condition(s) of maintenance of the OCPD... ...Oh, and it is a nominal voltage of 120v |
| It happens all the time with flooded junction boxes and such; all that happens is the circuit breaker trips. There is no resistance to the current path so amperage goes up until the breaker trips. If the wire size is not large enough to accommodate the current it starts to act like a resistor to give off the excess energy in the form of heat and burns up. |
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I've smoked the wiring on equipment more than once in my life. Stupidly we hooked up a ~90Amp 460V pressure washer up to the mains without a neutral with 1000Amp breakers to just run a short test. That one was a huge mistake. It did things that I can't explain to this day. The pressure hose, which is rubber coated wire braid hose, shorted out on the trailer and burned a hole in the rubber coating and started sparking. I was holding the hose with no current getting to me. The heating elements all blew out. They were shorted on the inside due to salt water. Crazy, but the guy that hooked it up didn't use the ground and I didn't know it. |
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Unless it's on a GFCI, which should trip. So my answer is "not enough information provided". Quoted:
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Depending on there size of the wire, it will either melt the wire insulation and turn it into what is essentially a heating element until failure of the circuit or trip the breaker. So my answer is "not enough information provided". 1. if a GFCI is installed it will trip immediately. If not, then 2. if a breaker or fuse is in the circuit it will trip within seconds. If not then 3. wire will produce heat, followed by smoke, followed by sparks (maybe). In any case it will be over shortly. |
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Depending on there size of the wire, it will either melt the wire insulation and turn it into what is essentially a heating element until failure of the circuit or trip the breaker. |
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It happens all the time with flooded junction boxes and such; all that happens is the circuit breaker trips. There is no resistance to the current path so amperage goes up until the breaker trips. If the wire size is not large enough to accommodate the current it starts to act like a resistor to give off the excess energy in the form of heat and burns up. Quoted:
These two answers,combined, are correct. There’s not a lot of info in the OP but: 1. if a GFCI is installed it will trip immediately. If not, then 2. if a breaker or fuse is in the circuit it will trip within seconds. If not then 3. wire will produce heat, followed by smoke, followed by sparks (maybe). In any case it will be over shortly. Quoted:
If the breaker and wiring are properly sized, it should just result in a tripped breaker. Watch the first 1:15 of this video-  6 of 7 Grounding Myths (26min:55sec) |
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Is the ground rod actually grounded? Attached File |
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Except that isn't the same and isn't always what happens in OP's example. Quoted:
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It happens all the time with flooded junction boxes and such; all that happens is the circuit breaker trips. Now if you are considering the stupid shit people do, then yes you can come up with other situations. |
| If there is a breaker somewhere in the circuit, it should trip the breaker due to the maximum current being exceeded. If it was connected directly to the meter base with no breaker in the path, it most likely would exceed the current rating of the wire by a very significant margin assuming there is a good connection to ground. This would result in a melted wire and probably a fire. |
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At least as well as this one. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/66085/B-k78QosD2gCMgbK2TORWBwmZfxcOOuROUjHKvyNUVc_jpg-844137.JPG Someone told a worm to ground the generator and that is what they did. |
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Well, actually I will submit that it is. Earth ground is functionally equlivent to the neutral in the typical 120 vac circuit. If you are using a generator you will see that the generator manufacturer requires you ground the generator. Water in a junction box in the ground is set at earth potential. Now if you are considering the stupid shit people do, then yes you can come up with other situations. Quoted:
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It happens all the time with flooded junction boxes and such; all that happens is the circuit breaker trips. Now if you are considering the stupid shit people do, then yes you can come up with other situations. 
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It happens all the time with flooded junction boxes and such; all that happens is the circuit breaker trips. Now if you are considering the stupid shit people do, then yes you can come up with other situations. |
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Well, actually I will submit that it is. Earth ground is functionally equlivent to the neutral in the typical 120 vac circuit. If you are using a generator you will see that the generator manufacturer requires you ground the generator. Water in a junction box in the ground is set at earth potential. Now if you are considering the stupid shit people do, then yes you can come up with other situations. |
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It will depend a great deal on the grounding. In most situations, not a lot will happen. It probably won't even trip the breaker, as it'd be hard to imagine a low enough impedance between the ground and transformer to get to 15+ amps.
My guess; a decent blue spark and some moderate heating of the wires. If this was a circuit experiencing a ground fault and a GFCI was present it would trip the GFCI. |
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Quoted: Don't ground generators. The only way to complete the circuit is back to the generator, unless you ground it to the ground and then you create another path that would typically be through a person. |
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Yeah but do you ever properly size wire when you run it straight to ground and create a direct short?  Quoted:
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If the breaker and wiring are properly sized, it should just result in a tripped breaker. Look, I have a proven track record of setting myself on fire in situations where a smart person, hell even a Nobel Laureate, would have said such an outcome was impossible. Thus, I'm very cautious around electricity and fire, and especially electricity that is on fire. |
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My grandpa had a 100 ft. electrical cord with two steel rods on one end. The wires were wrapped around the end of the rods and taped up with a few layers of electrical tape.
He'd take the out back of the house, stick the steel rods in the damp dirt between the creek and the back porch, clear us kids out of the area and then go inside and plug the other end into an outlet. The fishing worms would come out of the ground like rain falling from the skies. Then he'd unplug the electrical cords and holler for us to quickly gather up the stunned worms in the can we carried. He'd roll his worm cord up, put it away and we'd go fishing. Never blew the fuses but maybe that was a function of short duration or plenty of resistance due to the distance from rod to rod. |
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I am not an electrician nor do I claim any ability to know wiring. That's why watching Mike Holt learn me up on grounding ended up very different than I expected. Watch the first 1:15 of this video-  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNZC782SzAQQuoted:
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It happens all the time with flooded junction boxes and such; all that happens is the circuit breaker trips. There is no resistance to the current path so amperage goes up until the breaker trips. If the wire size is not large enough to accommodate the current it starts to act like a resistor to give off the excess energy in the form of heat and burns up. Quoted:
These two answers,combined, are correct. There’s not a lot of info in the OP but: 1. if a GFCI is installed it will trip immediately. If not, then 2. if a breaker or fuse is in the circuit it will trip within seconds. If not then 3. wire will produce heat, followed by smoke, followed by sparks (maybe). In any case it will be over shortly. Quoted:
If the breaker and wiring are properly sized, it should just result in a tripped breaker. Watch the first 1:15 of this video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNZC782SzAQYou now see why I might have a lot of problems with setting myself, and others, on fire. |
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Yeah but do you ever properly size wire when you run it straight to ground and create a direct short? Quoted:
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If the breaker and wiring are properly sized, it should just result in a tripped breaker. In light of what OP just posted, I don't even think we really need 12-3, or whatever it is, for this circuit. I think we can take a sledge to the wall, yank some wires, run some new ones, and make this whole thing way more efficient, while, at the same time, coming over budget, late on schedule, and with a metric fuckton of gypsum dust. What's the salvage value of 60 feet of 12-3? Maybe there's some cost recoup there? |
| If the ground rod is bonded to neutral, breaker should trip. If it's just a rod pounded into the earth, then the breaker will not trip and you will set up a ground fault with a voltage gradiant on the ground (earth) between the rod and the points the neutral are bonded to earth ground. As others have said, you will make the worms mad. |
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How would a GFI trip? There is no leakage to ground, ie no current traveling on the ground wire. The load IS the ground. We stopped using GFIs on pressure washers. Too many issues. The code prevents using a relay on the neutral line, but a relay on the neutral that was normally closed and wired so that if the equipment "received" leaked voltage, it opened the neutral circuit and killed the power would "work" as well. I'm sure there is some legitimate reason it isn';t allowed, but it should work. |
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How would a GFI trip? There is no leakage to ground, ie no current traveling on the ground wire. The load IS the ground. |
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Not an electrician....
Ground rod hammered into the ground? I'm guessing the ground/dirt isn't really conductive enough to transmit 110 volts with any reasonable/measurable level of current. I voted nothing happens. Now, a bolt of lightning hitting something attached to the ground rod? Like shit through a goose. Slightly higher level of voltage. 
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Shit. Bro, I don't even do V = IR to see how many amps are going to be pulled. I just post. It's like shooting from the hip. But safer. Yeah, I was seriously surprised by how many people are just milling around you at any given time, after accidentally shooting that one, I just don't do that anymore. Look, I have a proven track record of setting myself on fire in situations where a smart person, hell even a Nobel Laureate, would have said such an outcome was impossible. Thus, I'm very cautious around electricity and fire, and especially electricity that is on fire. The hypothetical was hooking up a hot wire to the ground rod. It could have been a 4 ft long 20 gauge or a 100ft long 4gauge. Get it now? If you are going to do something like that, I suspect proper wire sizing is somewhere after "what you are going to wear to sleep next month" in the rankings of importance for this exercise |
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My grandpa had a 100 ft. electrical cord with two steel rods on one end. The wires were wrapped around the end of the rods and taped up with a few layers of electrical tape. He'd take the out back of the house, stick the steel rods in the damp dirt between the creek and the back porch, clear us kids out of the area and then go inside and plug the other end into an outlet. The fishing worms would come out of the ground like rain falling from the skies. Then he'd unplug the electrical cords and holler for us to quickly gather up the stunned worms in the can we carried. He'd roll his worm cord up, put it away and we'd go fishing. Never blew the fuses but maybe that was a function of short duration or plenty of resistance due to the distance from rod to rod. The impedance of the soil is/was high enough that not enough current could flow to trip the breaker. If he set the rods close enough together or the soil was particularly conductive he might have been able to create a low enough impedance circuit to trip the breaker. Instead, he just passed enough current through the soil, and the worms in it, to irritate them and get them to come to the surface. If you set the rods far enough apart, you'd have effectivly a ground fault and current flow would drop very low and not much would happen beyond a couple feet from the hot electrode. I used to create very high power resistors for testing loading power supplies with a big bowl of water and some salt. You just position your electrodes across from each other and start adding salt till you get the resistance you desire. You can then further fine tune things by moving the electrodes to change the space between them. Same concept, really. Only catch is that water evaporates, so you have to keep an eye on your water level. If it drops, salinity increases and resistance decreases, and things can sort of get away from you pretty quick. |
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I'm not sure I understand your post The hypothetical was hooking up a hot wire to the ground rod. It could have been a 4 ft long 20 gauge or a 100ft long 4gauge. Get it now? If you are going to do something like that, I suspect proper wire sizing is somewhere after "what you are going to wear to sleep next month" are in the rankings of importance for this exercise Quoted:
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Shit. Bro, I don't even do V = IR to see how many amps are going to be pulled. I just post. It's like shooting from the hip. But safer. Yeah, I was seriously surprised by how many people are just milling around you at any given time, after accidentally shooting that one, I just don't do that anymore. Look, I have a proven track record of setting myself on fire in situations where a smart person, hell even a Nobel Laureate, would have said such an outcome was impossible. Thus, I'm very cautious around electricity and fire, and especially electricity that is on fire. The hypothetical was hooking up a hot wire to the ground rod. It could have been a 4 ft long 20 gauge or a 100ft long 4gauge. Get it now? If you are going to do something like that, I suspect proper wire sizing is somewhere after "what you are going to wear to sleep next month" are in the rankings of importance for this exercise |