Wiring Project of the Day

rberq wrote:This seems like a good place for my question. I have a 20 amp breaker with 12 gauge cable that used to feed an 8 foot electric baseboard. The heater is long gone and the cable terminates in a box inside a closet. I would like to run wire for two standard 110v outlets out of the box, one from each side of the 220v wire with a shared ground. Is there any reason not to do that?

I thought you were asking how to create a multi-branch circuit out of this...which would require a hot wire on each 120v phase, one shared neutral, and a shared ground. If all you want to do is power two outlets, and it is not necessary for each of them to be able to serve a 20 amp load, you can just wire them up like a normal circuit, as suggested above.

windyhill4.2 wrote: rberq,you posted earlier about wanting 2 -110 circuits for 110 outlets.You can use 1 yellow for power to 1 receptacle,# 2 yellow to # 2 receptacle,hook the white (neutral) to panel bar & to both of the receptacles,to the lighter colored screws,green is the ground for both receptacles. Back in the 80's,i wired around 300 houses with circuits like this,the new housing code in this state no longer allows for this method tho.

I did not realize multi-branch circuits are no longer code compliant. Not sure if that is a National or local code issue? My house still has a few of them.

Qtown1835 wrote:Two yellow wires are hot. Green is ground and white is neutral. If the neutral is open that is not good.

Not sure why they even ran a 3 wire cable for an electric baseboard, the neutral is not necessary for it to operate at 240v.

rberq,you can do what you want,but like I said,i helped wire over 300 houses with circuits wired the way I explained,none of them burned down.

Rob,i don't know if it is national code or just Pa.code,it was done this way for many yrs.

I have no issue with it, just did not know it was against code. I think the issue is that a lot of those circuits were wired with single pole breakers - sometimes people want to do some wiring and they shut off one breaker, not realizing the other half of the circuit is still live.

The upstairs of my house is that way. They pulled a single piece of 12-3 up through the wall, and put two bedrooms on each leg.

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Shared neutrals are not the norm as they once were....new construction is now separate neutrals...what's existing is all "grandfathered"

Shared neutral theory saved copper, not money tho...2-sep. 2/wire runs = same money as 1- 3/wire run.

Shared neutral also carried less amps than the sum of 2, because only carries the offset between the 2 wire amps...not the combined amps.

With now having 2-2/wires the amps offset still occurs, but now at panel bus and not out and away from panel bus.
The cause for change is high tech electronics can sometimes be bothered with fluctuations on shared neutrals and retrofitting or adding GFCI and AFCI needs non shared neutrals always also.

windyhill4.2 wrote:rberq,you can do what you want,but like I said,i helped wire over 300 houses with circuits wired the way I explained,none of them burned down.

Rob,i don't know if it is national code or just Pa.code,it was done this way for many yrs.

Just to be clear, there is no "PA electrical code." All states use the NEC. It's just a matter of which version they are currently enforcing. Many jurisdictions are a code cycle behind.

Rob R. wrote:You likely have a piece of 12-2 going to that box, not 12-3.

Rob R. wrote:Not sure why they even ran a 3 wire cable for an electric baseboard, the neutral is not necessary for it to operate at 240v.

Your original guess was right, Rob. On closer inspection it is two yellows and a green ground, just what you would expect for electric baseboard. The white wire I found is braided copper that runs to a telephone hookup block in the cellar. Apparently it is left over from a telephone that used to be upstairs, but I can trace it all the way from one end to the other and it's obviously not in use, so out it comes. That would have been embarrassing, if I had gone ahead and used it as a neutral.

So I could keep the green ground, make one of the yellow wires hot and the other neutral, and mess up the head of whoever looks at it 30 years from now. But the whole thing is an easy run through about 12 feet of steel conduit, so I think I will just pull the old wires out and run new 14-2 with ground to a new 15A breaker, both outlets on the same circuit

If you can pull new wire, that seems like the cleanest approach. No reason to step down to 14 gauge/15 amp though, unless you already have some to use.

If pulling new wire doesn't work out for some reason, you can indicate which yellow is hot with a band of black electrical tape.

Rob R. wrote:If you can pull new wire, that seems like the cleanest approach. No reason to step down to 14 gauge/15 amp though, unless you already have some to use.

Yeah, I have plenty of 14 gauge wire but no 12, and 14 is a little easier to work with.
But Square-D has changed their breakers sometime since I last installed some 30 years ago. Imagine that. So back to Lowes with the old double pole breaker to find the same style, and got the next-to-last one on the shelf. Back home, removed an ancient electrocuted and desiccated mouse carcass from behind the breakers, and reinstalled. Also put duct tape over some panel openings to keep his cousins out.

Today I wired up a 4000 watt electric heater in my shop, just for a quick blast of heat on the weekends. I already had a 240v 20 amp outlet, so it was easy enough to wire up. I would not want to see the bill if I kept it 70 in there with electric heat.

I also had some wiring to do in the house. This past week we had our living room painted, and I decided it was a good time to replace the 30 yr old outlets with fresh ones. Well, by the time you get done with 8 outlets and 3 switches, your fingers are sore! I swear it takes me twice as long to replace an old outlet than to install a new one. Put the chandelier on a dimmer switch, and installed a lighted switch in the stairwell for the basement, both were nice upgrades. I switched the power back on and got the vacuum to clean up and discovered that the vacuum would not turn on. hmmmm....went and got my meter, it said "open neutral". I had a hunch that the 4-wire pigtail I found in the adjacent outlet was the culprit, and sure enough I found a neutral that had pulled out of the wirenut slightly. When I replaced the outlet in that box with I had to stretch that pigtail a little to get the outlet clear of the box...lesson learned, don't assume an existing connection is snug/correct, and be careful tugging on it. I replaced all the wirenuts in that box with some nice 3M ones, and make sure everything was nice and tight. I also popped open the junction boxes for that room in the basement and checked those...found one wirenut that was pretty loose. So, what started as just a paint job turned into an afternoon electrical project. No complaints though, at least I know everything is new/tight.

I have convinced myself this can't be done, but just in case I'm missing something I'll throw it out here. I have a three-way light switch at the bottom of the stairs and another at the top, wired like the diagram below. The switch on the left is downstairs, the switch on the right is upstairs. Everything on the left in the diagram is inside the downstairs box. It would be extremely difficult to run new wire to the outlet location except from the switch, or to replace the cable running between the two switches (passes through a 4 X 12 beam inside a wall).

I would dearly love to tap power from the upstairs switch to power an outlet that I would install below the switch. However, I can't get power from either of the travelers because neither one is hot all the time. I thought I had a solution -- swap the two black wires in the downstairs box so the upstairs common would always be hot and could feed the outlet. But there's no neutral in the upstairs box so there would be no neutral for the outlet.

Hopeless?

Hopeless indeed,you will need to run another wire from somewhere.

I recently had a ballast die in one of my shop lights, so today I converted it to LED tubes. Very easy, just direct wire to power cord. Light output is impressive, and instant. In picture the light on the left still has the T12 bulbs, LEDS are on the right.

I bought a 4-pack from Amazon, the 4000k "daylight" bulbs. At some point I will convert one of the other fixtures.

I like the warmer light which can be had also...
LED replacement trough 4' are just a panel no 'bulbs'...
Check out high bay LED...
Mucho lumens...

New project - my garage has always been powered via a single 20 amp circuit breaker. This includes all lighting, a full size refrigerator, and a pool pump. Honestly I am surprised the breaker has never tripped when using a vacuum, etc. The wire feeding it is ancient, and there are signs of overheating in one of the junction boxes. Time to split the load on two circuits, and eliminate the old wire & splices. I am also going to add an outlet and lights to the attic over the garage. Hoping to have this wrapped up in the next week or so. After that...some 4' LED lights for the garage.