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Open Neutral? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm a helper and worked with an old time electrician and he did something a year ago that still troubles me. We wired a 50 amp 220 volt circuit for some heat pumps. he brought the wires into the panel, hooked them to ground and the breaker and left the white wire capped with a wire nut. He told me it will work fine and forget about it. Did we leave somebody with an open neutral? Is the ground wire the neutral now? Should I try and go back and fix this?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Maybe I’m missing something but 220 doesn’t need a neutral, just 2 hots. Maybe if you were wiring up a NEMA outlet with a neutral connection that would be bad, but a direct wire to an appliance sounds fine?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is correct. Direct connection to a 220/240 appliance takes two hots -- one each from opposite ends of the phase -- and a ground. No neutral is required. (You may even find a sticker inside the wiring panel to the effect of, "Do not connect any neutral wire." The mini split I just installed had one, for instance.)

Some people treat ground and neutral as interchangeable since in residential applications with only a single breaker panel they are often bonded at the panel anyhow. While you can get away with this in a variety of scenarios, doing so is not technically correct.