I have a 4 wire supply wire. It has a black, white, red and ground wire. I want to supply a 3 wire outlet.
Do I combine the white and ground wire?
Wiring – Converting 4 wire supply to 3 wire outlet
wiring
Related Topic
- Electrical – How to properly add another outlet off this box
- Wiring a 2-wire outlet into a 3-wire receptacle
- Electrical – Hard wiring a 4-wire oven to 3-wire outlet
- Wiring – Correct wiring of 4-wire cooktop to 3-wire 240V supply
- Wiring – 3 wire cooktop, 4 wire stove, 4 wire supply – what to do about neutral and ground
- Wiring – Converting switched outlet with 2 black and 1 red for a smart switch
- Wiring – connect the supply ground wire to a fixture’s ground wire with a wire nut
- Electrical – How to correctly wire the ceiling fan with these other switches and outlet
Best Answer
No, you absolutely should NOT connect the grounded (neutral) conductor to the grounding (earth) conductor.
If you have two ungrounded ( hot ) conductors, and you only want to use one. You can simply cap the unused conductor using a twist-on wire connector, or similar device.
However, when two ungrounded conductors are run, there's almost always a reason. It could be a simple multi-wire branch circuit, where one of the conductors is meant to feed other devices. Or it could be a multi-wire branch circuit, where one of the ungrounded conductors is switched. The latter is common where receptacles are split to allow half to always be hot, while the the other half is switched.