Cooktop dedicated circuit?
I have been tasked with installing an electric cooktop where an electric stove used to be.The existing circuit is three conductor (two hots and a ground).Coming off the new cooktop, is a four wire (two hots, neutral, and a ground).
Would I just bond the neutral (coming off the cooktop) with the ground conductors ( kinda the same way you would install a brand new dryer on a three wire circuit?
How should I handle this?
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For quite some time electric ranges were wired with two insulated wires plus a bare wire with the bare wire being the neutral. If that is the setup you have treat the bare wire as the neutral and do not connect the ground from the cooktop to it, connect the neutral to it instead. If you have three insulated wires, same thing goes - do not connect the cooktop ground to the neutral. If your house is wired like this you are allowed to leave it that way, you don't have to pull new cable to the breaker box. If it isn't hard to access the wire I would consider replacing it though. Here's an article showing how to connect a three wire cord or a four wire cord to a range. The same would apply to the cooktop, except a cooktop is hardwired.
http://www.hammerzone.com/archives/elect/appliance...
You need to run new wire
The new cooktop wants 220V and 120V for something. You wrote the old wiring has no return only ground. I suppose you not connect the return on the new unit, but the controls could use 120V and the return wire from the cooktop could be hot through seom internal circuit
The neutral should never be wired to the ground circuit.Sounds like the cooktop needs 120volts for the lights or something but would probably cook without it.