Quote Originally Posted by Francesco Rizzo
sweet, thanks! it's seems to make sense now. So the neutral and ground are the same thing, I would never want to hook up a nuetral to a hot wire. That's my issue, it seems the old 3 prong have two hot and a nuetral (ground) while the new 4 have a nuetral, ground, and two hot. Something wasn't sitting right about hooking up the nuetral wire off the compressor to a hot wire from the outlet. Would I be able to get away with the neutral and the ground off the compressor connected to the neutral of the outlet?? or am I about to burn my shack of a house down?
That's what they use to do before the 4prong boxes were available (tie the ground and neutral together) It kind of defeats the purpose of a seperate path to ground from the case of the device. I think the biggest issue is that your dryer breaker is probably a 40amp and your compressor only needs... say about a 15 or 20amp. Your compressor could smoke to the ground before the breaker would trip. (Just another thought...)