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The Difference Between Neutral and Earth Ground in AC Installations | Scottie's Tech.Info
If you've ever had the pleasure of upgrading old electrical wiring in a residence, you know that a separate earth ground wire was generally not used in the past. In such cases, you find yourself with 2 wires: live, and neutral. Now, you might want to install a grounded outlet without redoing a lot of wiring. A common method of getting around this little problem is to install the new 3-conductor outlet by tying live to one prong, neutral to the other prong, and then using a jumper wire to connect neutral to the ground connection inside the outlet. "Theoretically, this should work just fine!" you reason. It turns out that theoretically, you are in fact correct. Practically speaking, adding a "ground" in a 2-wire installation by tying neutral and ground together has several serious - and possibly dangerous - drawbacks. Here's the scoop.