I've got voltage :(

Those little plug things are nice. They will also tell you if the outlet is hooked up backwards too. If it is the same one I am thinking of

I'm no electrician but how much stuff actually cares which is power and which is nuetral on the outlets? I know motors, and heaters really don't. I have seen some circuit boards have a polarity sensitivity but at least some home computers don't. Very little of the stuff I work on cares about polarity so i am actually very curious about your experiences with this.
 
I'm no electrician but how much stuff actually cares which is power and which is nuetral on the outlets? I know motors, and heaters really don't. I have seen some circuit boards have a polarity sensitivity but at least some home computers don't. Very little of the stuff I work on cares about polarity so i am actually very curious about your experiences with this.

Nothing really cares since AC is a sine wave. It is more for a safety stand point. The nuetral is bonded to ground in the first electrical panel in a house. So if you have one guy hooking up the outlets one way and another hooking them up another, you can potentially cause a short some where along the line.

Circuit boards tend to run mostly on DC power once it goes through the transformer. So it might matter which one is the nuetral on them since they might have some electrical connection to it on them.
 
Ah that makes sense I actually knew about the bonding nuetral to ground in main panel. Never occured to me that it could cause a short. But sure enough you cross those wires on the same circuit you will get one.
 
I'm with Wonton on this one, ask for something to be coded and I'll whip it up, I'll even build small computers out of circuits and logic gates, but actually working with electricity has a tendancy to loose me quickly.
 
Come on, ladies! One of us on this forum has to redeem our gender and know this stuff! :grumble:

I'm with Wonton on this one, ask for something to be coded and I'll whip it up, I'll even build small computers out of circuits and logic gates, but actually working with electricity has a tendancy to loose me quickly.

My hubby has one of those electricity kits that he's going to teach our kids on sometime....I'm staring at it and I still don't get it :) I actually get the open/close circuit thing, but when it comes down to calculating stuff, fuggedaboudit.
 
Come on, ladies! One of us on this forum has to redeem our gender and know this stuff! :grumble:



My hubby has one of those electricity kits that he's going to teach our kids on sometime....I'm staring at it and I still don't get it :) I actually get the open/close circuit thing, but when it comes down to calculating stuff, fuggedaboudit.
:) That's what you have us here for!
 
Yep, that was exactly it. NDB rigged up a homemade grounding rod that I'm using in the meantime. I'm going to order a new one this weekend, and probably new powerheads since they are leaking a lot of voltage.
 
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