Danger, danger danger!

This is why air conditioner engineers make extremely bad electricians! Look at the bare wire to the right. It looks like an earth wire but its connected to the right side neutral bus. Interestingly the live and neutral wires going to the air conditioner unit are both live. It looks like the cheapass that installed the air conditioning unit used 3 wire cable instead of 4 wire, running the two live lines through the live and neutral wires and the neutral through the non insulated earth wire. The result is shocking wiring. I am informed that the incompetents that installed this may well have been a South Carolina firm called Kabiner or something similar. I am apparently the first person in 5 years to open that breaker box! Let's just say I'm very glad I inspected, used a voltmeter and rubber gloves. Thus kind of horrendously dangerous electrical workmanship is far too common in South Carolina!

I still have to cover my conduit with soil but my 30A socket works. It's all correctly wired and working. Sadly, I couldn't bury my cables due to the fact nobody else has which would make putting a shovel in the ground somewhat hazardous. Dish Network for example, laid cable that looks like stitching with alternating above ground and slightly buried cable. The old phone conduit is largely underground but above ground in other places. There are various loops of cable of various types poking out of the ground, hence my decision to lay my conduit on the surface and cover it over. It is most definitely not the recommended solution but the only alternative would have been an aerial cable which would have had to be armored against squirrels.

The end result was a working socket. I tested it with a TT30 to 10-15 adaptor and a fan. Tomorrow, the big test when I plug my welder in. For now though, the electric cable that has been running under m'ladys front door for the past few months is now gone.

I'd been stressing over doing the wiring because I had to look everything up. Normally, I go by what was done before but what had been done before was so horrendously dangerous, it couldn't be used as a guide. As I said, normally I'd bury the conduit but what with it being a low to no traffic area being in a nook by the end of m'ladys trailer, I'm not afraid of foot traffic over the cables.