Question about Ground Connection

[Neo-X]

Hellow 2 all.. I just wondering why the ground cannot be used as return path of electric current of the electric appliances? In my country, the standard voltage from the line is 220volts but we have a 110volts appliances so im thinking what if i connect it to the one of the wire in the socket and the other one to the ground to have a 110vots. Very simple and effecient no need for bulky transformer but why nobody do that? Whats the reason?

[Groundloop]

Hellow 2 all.. I just wondering why the ground cannot be used as return path of electric current of the electric appliances? In my country, the standard voltage from the line is 220volts but we have a 110volts appliances so im thinking what if i connect it to the one of the wire in the socket and the other one to the ground to have a 110vots. Very simple and effecient no need for bulky transformer but why nobody do that? Whats the reason?

The reason is simple, you do not want to kill yourself or others.

Do the proper thing, buy yourself a 220VAC to 110VAC insulation transformer, and use that instead.

Here is a little story from many years ago:

My brother had bought himself a new house. Just moved in. The house did have a cellar apartment also.
I did stay in that apartment  when I was visiting my brother. In the morning I went for a shower. In the
same instant that I did turn on the water and stepped into the shower I was zapped by 110 volt AC.
I found myself on the floor, knocked out for a while. This happened because the former owner had
wired the electric wires himself. The washing machine was grounded to a nail in the concrete wall
just opposite to the shower. The washing machine had a fault in it so that half the mains went to ground.
The only path to ground was the moisture in the concrete wall and, you guessed it, through the metal
pipes in the shower I was using. Normally the ground protection breaker switch should have tripped,
and prevented this, but since the ground path was outside the ground protection breaker, it did not open.

So you see, pumping 110 volt AC into the ground is NOT a smart ting to do. If your house wires has
a ground protection breaker, then this breaker will activate at a very small current. And that is how
it should be.

GL.

[Neo-X]

Thanks... I understand now..

[totoalas]

brosame with my lola
my father used the tap water as ground and one ive wire
she was shocked on the steel staircase and got a heart attack
residual current device breakers are usually set at 30ma max so that any.leakage to ground will trip the cb
same with neutral and ground
totoalas

[fritz]

Assuming that we are somewhere in open space beneath a mains transformer - there should be no difference between phase-neutral and phase-earth (because neutral is grounded at the transformer). So you will get still 220V.

In some countries and remote places (Australia, Canada), there are SWER(single wire earth return) distribution nets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return

Depending on the grounding, humidity, etc. there will be a varying voltage - so you need variacs to compensate for 220V.

So please keep your hands off,  110<>220 V conversion has nothing todo with grounding.

There are electronic devices or transformers to accomplish that.
The cheapest solution is probably an autotransformer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotransformer


rgds.