[nprranch]

I recently started a circular saw from an outlet that also had a small "Makita" type battery charger plugged into it. Almost immediately the saw stopped and a flame shot through what appeared to be the location of the Makita charger. The saw was tried elsewhere and it works fine, the Makita charger is gone, but the battery in the charger is still good?? This service was in an outbuilding with a main breaker panel with the neutral and grounds wired together. From my earlier questions I have found that this was not correct, that they should have been separated (as this service comes off another breaker box which comes off a breaker at the pole). Now that I have been told that the neutral and grounds should only be connected at the pole (where the first service disconnect is), I have gone back into the service panel in question (where the circuit blew) and separated the neutrals and grounds and connected the grounds to a ground rod. I reconnected a test outlet and it appeared to have power when I plugged in a circuit tester (2 amber lights), but I tried a small electric drill to test and I got nothing? An voltage tester shows 240 when both hots are touched, 120 when 1 hot and neutral touched (same on both hots). Also get 120 when black side of outlet tested with white side of outlet. I'm just bewildered at this point why I'm not getting any power to the drill?? Do I need to go back further in the system and ground the second box (the one that this service comes off and which the service from the pole goes into).

If anyone has any ideas, I'm at a loss at this point. I can supply further description if I've left out any information you might deem pertinent.

By the way, the electrician? That made this initial instillation will never do another job for me.

Thanks in advance for any help.

nprranch

[nprranch]

An addition to this previous question that I had forgotten to include is that when the saw blew out the charger, no breakers blew anywhere in the system.

[donf]

If you still have the charger, see if you can find the max current needed by the charger as well as the max current needed by the saw.

Sounds like you might have a circuit that may be fed from 2 supplies.

Also, workshop receptacle should be protected by either a GFCI panel breaker or GFCI protected receptacles.

[nprranch]

It appears this question has stumped all the electricians out there? I would like to thank DONF for his response and advise about GFCI receptacles, but I still haven't located the source of the problem. Does anyone have any step by step ideas I could follow to track down the problem?