In order to receive a shock, the critter somehow has to complete the circuit between the two lugs on the charger. There are no two ways about that.Buster said:
Now, in your typical electric fence setup, the circuit goes hot lug to hot wire to animal to earth to ground rod to ground wire to ground lug and BAM...but that's not the only way to do it.
If you hook your 'cold' wires up to the ground lug of the charger, they become the ground wire, so the circuit goes hot lug to hot wire to animal to ground wire to ground lug, with the animal completing the circuit directly between the hot and ground wires. If you've got bare cold wires against t-posts in your fence line, you may get a weak shock from earth-to-hot contact, as the t-posts will most likely act as makeshift ground rods...but I wouldn't necessarily depend on it working that way, as t-posts are painted and therefore somewhat insulated, plus they're not buried so deeply that the ground won't ever completely dry up around them..
Now...
...if you hook your 'cold' wires up to true ground rods AND the ground lug on the charger, the animal can complete the circuit either way. For instance...if they touch a cold wire and a hot wire simultaneously, the circuit is completed directly through the wires and there's no 'earth' involvement. If, however, they only touch a hot wire and the earth, the circuit is completed through the earth to the ground rods, then follows the cold wires back around to the charger.That's how mine's hooked up. I can test voltage by putting the tester on the hot wire and either poking the ground probe into the earth, or touching it to one of the cold wires. It's the same shock either way...just uses a different circuit.
That should work.Buster said:
