At Home In The Woods

[JB4310]

The original dryer cord did not have a strain relief. A shortcut like this could burn down a house.

So could the use of plastic flex hose for venting!

Not to be critical, and not sure if there's any code against it, but even though it was used for years it's not safe and should not be used according to....

Dryer Venting

I'm a contractor and am in many homes, I rarely see plastic dryer venting anymore. That's why I'm surprised to see it in your new construction.

I found out when I had an appliance repairman refuse to work on our dryer unless we replaced the plastic with metal.

Hope this helps, though I didn't read all your thread here, so maybe this has already been addressed.

JB.

 

[simonds]

Shouldn't your green wire with the tape be bonded to the ground terminal? This wire may go to the timer unit and or the motor, which is 110 volt and needs a ground. The 220 volt is for the heating element.
Just my opinion
Clayton

 

[Obed]

If the nuetral and ground are bonded elsewhere in the house besides the outside panel, you will have half the return current returning to the panel on the ground wire since the ground and neutral will be parallel paths back to the panel. Code does not allow any current on the ground except in a fault condition. Hopefully that made sense. I haven't had any coffee yet.:laughing:

Cyril,
That does make sense. If you don't not want current running between the house and the outside panel on the ground wire then you can't have any ground wires in the house touching the neutral wire.

Obed

 

[dcyrilc]

Cyril,
That does make sense. If you don't not want current running between the house and the outside panel on the ground wire then you can't have any ground wires in the house touching the neutral wire.

Obed

That would be correct. Someone asked about the factory ground (green) wire in the dryer.
My specialty is traffic signals not residentual wiring, but I would have expected that it would have been connected to the neutral on the three wire plug and connected to the Chassie ground in the four wire configuration. I could be wrong though. Maybe someone who does this for a living could give some better advice?

 

[brandoro]

Shouldn't your green wire with the tape be bonded to the ground terminal? This wire may go to the timer unit and or the motor, which is 110 volt and needs a ground. The 220 volt is for the heating element.
Just my opinion
Clayton

Both of those devices should be connected to the neutral wire, 120 volts is from either hot wire (red/black) to the neutral (white). The ground is for grounding of the chassis for the safety of the operator so he or she does not become a path to ground.
It would be good to check where the disconnected wire goes to, just in case. If it is bonded to the neutral somewhere inside the dryer then it should stay taped off.
I am a journeyman electrician, Canadian Interprovincial ticket but I don't believe there are many differences in how clothes dryers should be connected between Canada and the USA.

 

[Obed]

If the nuetral and ground are bonded elsewhere in the house besides the outside panel, you will have half the return current returning to the panel on the ground wire since the ground and neutral will be parallel paths back to the panel. Code does not allow any current on the ground except in a fault condition.

Shouldn't your green wire with the tape be bonded to the ground terminal? This wire may go to the timer unit and or the motor, which is 110 volt and needs a ground. The 220 volt is for the heating element.
Just my opinion
Clayton

Clayton,

The electrical inspector made a point to tell me to make sure that the ground wires in the electrical panels inside the house are not bonded to the neutral wire in the house. Cyril has an explanation for that point.

Originally the green wire shown in the picture above was bonded to the dryer chassis. Using a multimeter, I found that that green wire was also bonded to the white neutral wire that runs into the dryer. In order to unbind the dryer's neutral from ground, I had to tape off that green wire. If I did not disconnect that green wire and thus the neutral from the chassis, then the 4 wire plug would act exactly like the 3 wire plug and would provide no benefit.

The end result is the dryer's neutral is now not bound to the ground system in the house as desired. This wiring also keeps the neutral wires in the inside electrical panels from being bound to any grounds in the house. The only place neutral is bound to the ground system is at our outside electrical panels.

Clayton, I connected the green ground wire from the 4 wire cable to the dryer's chassis. I would expect that the motor in the dryer is most likely physically bolted to the dryer's chassis and thus is grounded to the ground wire I attached to the chassis. I suspect that the timer is also grounded to the chassis but would have to take the dryer apart to verify that.

Obed, I'm going to go off on a small tangent here and look into this dryer plug thing. When using a 4 wire plug is it a requirement to tape off the ground as you have here? I installed one a while back and don't remember what I did with the chassis ground. I think I put it with the ground from the plug.

Jay, I don't know whether or not the green wire in your dryer is bound to the neutral in the dryer. If they are, then I would have done it differently than you did but you might want a licensed electrician's opinion. If the green wire is bound to the neutral, then your 4 wire cord is acting like a 3 wire cord and is like the majority of the houses in this country.

Obed

 

[2manyrocks]

And the saga continues. Forget Shakespeare, here comes the story of Obed and his house.

 

[Obed]

We are in the same boat you are!
I'm only 100 miles away or so.
With that said we have about 11 inches on the ground as of last night but I've not been out today.

Last night I parked my car at the bottom of our street and walked through the woods to get home. I went to work this morning and had to walk back through the woods to reach my car. It's a 10 minute walk and kind of pretty. I didn't know when I moved here that as a side benefit I would get to take morning and evening strolls through the woods!

 

[Obed]

Both of those devices should be connected to the neutral wire, 120 volts is from either hot wire (red/black) to the neutral (white). The ground is for grounding of the chassis for the safety of the operator so he or she does not become a path to ground.
It would be good to check where the disconnected wire goes to, just in case. If it is bonded to the neutral somewhere inside the dryer then it should stay taped off.
I am a journeyman electrician, Canadian Interprovincial ticket but I don't believe there are many differences in how clothes dryers should be connected between Canada and the USA.

Rod,
Thanks for the confirmation.
Obed

 

[dcyrilc]

Originally the green wire shown in the picture above was bonded to the dryer chassis. Using a multimeter, I found that that green wire was also bonded to the white neutral wire that runs into the dryer. In order to unbind the dryer's neutral from ground, I had to tape off that green wire. If I did not disconnect that green wire and thus the neutral from the chassis, then the 4 wire plug would act exactly like the 3 wire plug and would provide no benefit.

Obed

Based on your meter readings, I would have to say that you have it connected correctly.

 

[jayste]

Last night I parked my car at the bottom of our street and walked through the woods to get home. I went to work this morning and had to walk back through the woods to reach my car. It's a 10 minute walk and kind of pretty. I didn't know when I moved here that as a side benefit I would get to take morning and evening strolls through the woods!

A great way to wind down after a busy day at work and a slippery drive home!:thumbsup:

 

[tommu56]

Your trip to you car reminded me of this from high school many moons ago.


Whose woods these are I think I know.


His house is in the village, though;


He will not see me stopping here


To watch his woods fill up with snow.



My little horse must think it queer


To stop without a farmhouse near


Between the woods and frozen lake


The darkest evening of the year.




He gives his harness bells a shake


To ask if there is some mistake.


The only other sound's the sweep


Of easy wind and downy flake.




The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,


And miles to go before I sleep.



poem of Robert Frost

 

[Obed]

Your trip to you car reminded me of this from high school many moons ago.

...

poem of Robert Frost

Yes, I can see that. And actually, my trek through the woods goes beside our pond down in the hollow.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Today I hiked to my car again at the bottom of the hill and went to work. My wife's car was parked at our house but couldn't get her car up our driveway because of the snow. She tried to scrape some snow off our gravel driveway with the tractor but that didn't work very well. She did take the tractor and scrape the snow off the street which enabled me to drive my car to the top of the street after work. I parked my car at the street for tonight so tomorrow morning I won't get to walk through the woods.

 

[dstig1]

I'm thinking you may want to switch over to AWD or 4wd vehicles over the next couple years... And maybe even good winter tires....

 

[Obed]

The master shower does not yet have a shower door installed so we aren't using it. We finally got the shower rod and curtain up in the hall bath so this morning I took my first shower in the house. It was much nicer than showering in the camper. I didn't really want to get out of the shower.

We made sure we got shower controls that allow us to change the volume of water that comes out of the shower. A lot of the showers of people I've visited only have one setting for flow rate - full blase. That just seems wasteful to me and makes things difficult if lots of people need to shower. Our shower control also lets you set the temperature independently of the flow rate. The water temp was very easy to adjust. Adjusting the water temperature in the camper's shower was very hard to do with the cheap plumbing controls.

 

[Obed]

I'm thinking you may want to switch over to AWD or 4wd vehicles over the next couple years... And maybe even good winter tires....

Dave,
If we keep getting winters like this one, we might have to consider a 4WD vehicle. This winter has been abnormal as of recent years. It does remind me of the weather we had when I was a kid.

Obed

 

[Obed]

When we tried to use our 240V wall-mount electric space heater in the master bathroom, we found that it wasn't working correctly. It would run a couple minutes at most and then shut off. When we tested it after the electrical workers installed it, we just verified that it would run but never left it on for more that 30 seconds.

During construction, the electricians originally ran 120V to the heater and we had to make them change the circuit to 240V. After finding out the heater wasn't working, I started wondering if the heater did not get wired correctly so I checked the wiring both in the electrical panel and in the heater's wall box to make sure they matched the manufacturer's instructions.

When I took the heater out of the wall, I noticed that some of the heating coils were bent and were touching each other. Thus I got a pair of tweasers and bent the heating coils so they didn't touch each other. After putting the heater back together, it ran for 20 minutes before I turned it off. So it appears the problem has been fixed.

That heater sure makes the bathroom toasty in no time. If I had it to do over again, I would have located the bathroom HVAC register somewhere other than right below the wall heater. Having warm air flow through the register right below the heater might give the wall heater false temperature readings. We'll have to see how much the register affects the wall heater. But for now I'm just glad we got the wall heater working.

 

[dstig1]

Dave,
If we keep getting winters like this one, we might have to consider a 4WD vehicle. This winter has been abnormal as of recent years. It does remind me of the weather we had when I was a kid.

Obed

I talked with a local architect a few years back who said that once a clients driveway started to get to be over 8% slope or so he started recommending that they have AWD vehicles to avoid trouble in the winter. My wife has an AWD Explorer, and I am driving a little Civic (FWD), and I can tell the difference between them by a ton. We currently live in a typical suburb development (essentially city/suburb - not rural). When you back out of our driveway to go towards the main road, you are now pointing slightly uphill, and when there is snow on the road, I spin my tires to get going (sometimes, a lot). The Explorer just goes. I also have a 4wd F250 for towing the tractor and for when it gets really bad.... Same thing there as I can really tell the difference between 4wd and 2wd modes when it is snowy.

 

[Obed]

When I took the heater out of the wall, I noticed that some of the heating coils were bent and were touching each other. Thus I got a pair of tweasers and bent the heating coils so they didn't touch each other. After putting the heater back together, it ran for 20 minutes before I turned it off. So it appears the problem has been fixed.

The heater is not fixed. The next morning it shut off after running 30 seconds. You can get it to work by taking off the grill and pushing a reset button. Yesterday I called the manufacturer. They are going to send me a new thermal overload device and a new grill with larger openings in the grill. The support person said that sometimes the heat from the heating elements causes the thermal overload to trip.