This is more of an educational post as I want to understand this. I have just completed changing every light fixture around the house. As part of the install to make sure my ground is good since every fixture uses old BX cable that acts as a ground, I usually either check against another outlet’s hot (via extension cord) to any metal surface around the light fixture (usually unpainted bare metal surfaces) OR inside the light bulb mount area against metal surface. I usually get 118.9 to 120.2 volts. So allgood. Except there was this one fixture where after the install I was getting 109 volts. Actually I do the above test on every outlet/switch repair I do. Anyways I kept trying against various surfaces (and I installed the same fixture before and tested it same way in another room and I got 120volts). So then I removed the nuts holding it, extending it down, I simply disconnected the ground wire from green ground screw thats on the mount plate and wrapped it around the screw again and tightened it again. It looked exactly how it did before. And I usually wrap it a few times and make sure when screw is toghtened strands stay under it. I put the fixture back and now it reads 120 volts as well. What could be an explanation to this?

I am moving back to Washington state from the Philippines and want to bring back some electrical appliances such as refrigerator, keezer, split aircon's that work on 220v two wire system. Our system here in the Philippines is one hot wire that is 220v and one neutral wire a two prong plugin. It's my understanding that in the U.S. a standard 220v line is two 110 lines a neutral and a ground. Is there any way I can bring a line out of the panel that would work with the 220v appliances that we have here? I do have transformers that say they can convert 110v to 220v two wire system but they are expensive to run and I've had them catch on fire so I would like to run it from the panel instead of using the transformer. Thanks