Polarity

[codgerbill]

Haveing retired from a job at an Electric Utility and dealing with AC and DC systems for 43 years (from 340,000 volts to 12 volts) I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the stuff. I associate polarity with positive and negative regarding a sine wave or on a DC system. When we speak of polarity regarding the campground power pedistals does polarity refer to associated locations of the "hot" leads/connections on the female plug with respect to the ground location? When cheching for "polarity" at a campground pedistal does one use the voltmeter to determine that the campground has not placed a "hot" lead in the ground/neutral position in the recepticle?

[Route 66]

Pedestal receptacles must have the hot, neutral and ground wired to the correct terminals to be safe and correct.

Click here for everything you wanted to know about this issue.

[codgerbill]

Thanks Dirk. I looked at the link and I see that G should be ground, W should be neutral, X & Y on a 240 V recepticle are the hots and the 7 o'clock on a 20 amp receptical should be the hot leg. One is never too old to learn.

[wa8yxm]

Polarity refers to which wire is hooked to what screw on the outlet

Most outlets have different color screws, or labels on the screws The colors are (Label first)

W, White This is where the NEUTRAL wire connects

B, L1, L2, Black, This is where the HOT wire connects

G or Green is the safety ground

Some parks get the black and white reversed (All outlets)

Some on 50 amps use either L-1 L-1 or L-2 L-2

And I've even heard of GREEN wires hooked to the wrong screw (In fact I saw it, on my house!!!!! Professionally done too)

So "Polarity" means that the white and green wires are hooked to the proper screws and if a 50 amp outlet that the remaining 2 are L-1 L-2 not the same bridged.