I have very recent experience on this having just recently built a new house. When getting the physical phone lines run from the pedestal in the street to the house I had a curve ball thrown at me as the phone line HAS to be connected to the house where the power comes in. Where the power comes in there HAS to be a dedicated ground with a provided grounding plate for phone and others to ground to. This is per code according to both the CenturyLink tech and my electrician. So whether the "power company" has to provide the ground directly or "the electrician responsible for the house wiring" has to provide the ground... I don't know, I just know it IS required to be present for code. In my case I had ran all of the low voltage everywhere in the house and having noted that the CenturyLink pedestal is on the north west corner of my property and the north west corner of my house is where I have all of my cables terminated at I thought this was going to be perfect, they can run the phone line up about 20 feet to my house and be done. The curve ball is that the power is on the opposite side of the house (breaker box in the attached garage) so the phone line had to be brought in over there to attach to the power ground. So I had to obviously run a new cable through the garage back over to where my wiring all runs to for DSL. Too bad I didn't know about this myself until after the drywall was all installed. It is so much easier and cleaner to run the cabling inside the walls. Oh well, at least the room where it all runs to is adjacent to the garage so I only had to go through one internal wall. On Fri, 2013-01-04 at 12:32 -0600, Eric Crist wrote: > Right, it's a neutral, and not considered service-side to be a ground. Neutral is required for the electricity to flow. The ground at the poles isn't for service customers - it's for the power company's own systems and infrastructure. Neutral and ground are bound on two busses inside the electrical panel - but server two distinct purposes. > > ----- > Eric F Crist > > > > On Jan 4, 2013, at 12:30:24, Wayne Johnson <wdtj at yahoo.com> wrote: > > > Not true. That's the third (bare) wire coming into the house. It's both ground and neutral. It is then tied to both the ground and neutral busses in the box. Usually there is one power pole somewhere on the block that has a wire from this common to a copper grounding rod. At least that's what I found when I replaced my fusebox (and with the aid of a licensed electrician). > > > > When we had the tornado come through north Minneapolis we had lots of issues with houses that lost their wired grounds and the journyman electricians were getting injured because the power pole grounds were all torn out. > > > > --- > > Wayne Johnson, | There are two kinds of people: Those > > 3943 Penn Ave. N. | who say to God, "Thy will be done," > > Minneapolis, MN 55412-1908 | and those to whom God says, "All right, > > (612) 522-7003 | then, have it your way." --C.S. Lewis > > > > From: Eric Crist <ecrist at secure-computing.net> > > To: Wayne Johnson <wdtj at yahoo.com>; TCLUG Mailing List <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> > > Sent: Friday, January 4, 2013 12:15 PM > > Subject: Re: [tclug-list] power > > > > Power companies, in my experience, don't provide a ground from the utility. > > ----- > > Eric F Crist > > > > > > > > On Jan 4, 2013, at 12:13:16, Wayne Johnson <wdtj at yahoo.com> wrote: > > > > > Most likely you have a bad ground since you obviously have power. Grounds are important on PC equipment in that they help remove stray static electricity. Check the rest of your house and see if you have the same or if it's just that plug. > > > > > > If it's the whole house you have a big safety problem. House wiring (at least for recent codes) need 3 ground points. The power companies ground, a copper stake in the ground, and a water pipe. Loss of any of these is a issue, especially since thieves have been stealing the ground wires off the power poles for the copper. > > > > > > > > > --- > > > Wayne Johnson, | There are two kinds of people: Those > > > 3943 Penn Ave. N. | who say to God, "Thy will be done," > > > Minneapolis, MN 55412-1908 | and those to whom God says, "All right, > > > (612) 522-7003 | then, have it your way." --C.S. Lewis > > > > > > From: gregrwm <tclug1 at whitleymott.net> > > > To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org > > > Sent: Friday, January 4, 2013 12:21 AM > > > Subject: Re: [tclug-list] power > > > > > > plugged in a tripp lite. says "line fault". arrg. poor defenseless mobos. > > > _______________________________________________ > > > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > > > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > > > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > > > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > > > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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