Where I used to work (Gov't engineering office), Spec writers used to come up with the most elaborate colour schemes for wiring - all as outlined by the electrical code. Most of the time, when I would ask "when was the last time you required Pirelli to produce 500 feet of custom coloured wire?" they would include the phrase "or other acceptable means of identification." Gerry :-)} London, Canada
Knob and Tube is ok - however when it is done with bare wire or with real rubber coating in the attic - bare sections are all over the place due to heat.
My father-in-law had a mixture. The house was built in a hurry post WW-II
The tube was grand-fathered in - but once I saw it and showed him - he kept out of the attic with power on. Bare wires were like a spiderweb.
He upgraded from a 50 amp house to a 100 amp house so he could put in air (plug in the wall grade) and another room. He got a good (trade) friend to work on it - and got a good job from what I saw.
Martin
Martin H. Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net TSRA, Life; NRA LOH & Endowment Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot"s Medal. NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.
jk wrote:
Another reason to have an outlet tester, preferably the GFI test unit. Gerry :-)} London, Canada
I cheat by twisting & tinning the last cm or so of the stranded cable to make it solid enough for a screw terminal. The drawback is that you need to provide some sort of strain relief or it'll tend to fatigue where the solder stops. An inch of thick plastic tube works well.
If your terminal block needs a lug on the cable, you can form the strands into a loop around a nail before tinning, & use the above trick - just remember to thread your strain-relief onto the cable
*before* stripping & forming!
Yeah, I have been considering that. The subpanel would be in the basement where I expect to relocate my shop to - which is just a few feet away from where the outlet in the garage would need to be.
Yeah, I did some research tonight at home depot and on the internet. I remember now that the ground and neutral is only allowed to be connected together at the main service panel. So when you wire a subpanel, you need a 3 wire+ground run and you need to configure the panel with separate neutral and ground busses.
What I was having trouble figuring out at Home Depot was of the the collection of distribution panels they sell, which could be used as a subpanel. But some research on the Internet helped me gain a little more insight on that. The terms "mains lug" instead of "mains breaker" means the panel is configured with only lugs and without a mean breaker and in general, when it's configured like that it's possible to to set it up with separate neutral and ground busses. Some I see are designed to be converted either way - the main breaker can be added later or removed.
Yeah, the welder is pure 220, not a split 110/220 needing 4 wires.
Yeah, I went there tonight just to check it out. They sell wire down to #6 gauge in the insulated cables format (as well as service cable which is much larger). And they sell single wires in sized down to about #2 gauge if my memory is correct.
But according to the charts, #6 is only good to 50 amps. So running a 60 amp circuit requires running separate wires in a conduit as far as I can tell. But the welder manual says that #8 wire is ok. I saw somewhere that circuits dedicated to welders are allowed smaller gauge wires because of their low duty cycle (they never pull the high currents for very long). So I have to try and get a better answer to this question of what size wire this welder really needs.
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 20:43:07 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "ATP*" quickly quoth:
They sure beat to hell all those newfangled receptacles with the hokey push-in wiring scheme. That's a fire waiting to happen and I can't believe the NEC allows any of them!
---=====--- After all else fails, read the instructions. ---=====---
snip
Corrrect
Correct. Most of the better panels (I'm partial to Square D - QO series) have a grouding screw that connects the neutral buss to the case. When you go to a subpanel situation, you remove the screw and add in an optional ground bus bar.
A little foresight goes a long way. Do you think you MIGHT do some other equipment later on that might need a neutral? If so, put it in now.
The charts at Home Depot do not correlate well with the NEC sad to say. The HD charts do not make any mention of the grade of wire ie NM, THHN, UF, USE, TW, etc. Nor any mention of buried vs open vs conduit vs sheathed (NM) and much more. There is a combination that will work for you, you will likely need to check with your local electrical inspector to find out what is legal in your jurisdiction.
The NEC allows DEDICATED welder circuit to have a breaker larger than normal for a given wire size on the grounds that the load is intermittant. I STRONGLY object to this in a residential setting. If you plug it in, someone else can come along and plug in something else. Sorta like putting a penny in the fuse holder and telling everyone that you only intend to hook up a single lightbulb. In your case, the wire in unlikely to melt but you can do in the insulation quite nicely.
IMHO stranded should only be used with screw lugs, compression lugs, or capture washers on the screws, ALA the old Intermatic timer posts.
They claim that the grooved fillister heads will restrain the wires, but I've never seen it - they always get spit out around the edges.
And the instructions on new Quickwire receptacles restricts them to
14-gauge wire only. Even then they are marginal, but the 15A load restriction helps.Best way to waste an afternoon (and look like a fool in the customer's eyes...) is to run around a house looking for the intermittent open Quickwire - of course it won't act up while you're looking for it, so you have to open every box and wiggle and sniff...
Yes, sniff - the smell of barbecued plastic is quite unique.
-->--
For smaller wire sizes (ie 14 to maybe 8 gauge stranded) you can start your strip extra long and then don't pull the insulation all the way off. This will keep the strands from unraveling. Now make a loop and wrap around the screw terminal. Leave the piece of insulation on the wire and install that way. Crimps are expensive and take too long to be practical when doing this for a living. I never had any inspectors question this method, but it was a few years ago.
Here is some crappy ASCII art. The single dashes are the wire insulation, the equal signs are the stranded wire. A fixed pitch font for viewing recommended.
----- -------------- =================
----- -------------- ^^ bare wire is here.
Be careful when doing this that you don't end up with a single strand/s pulled loose along with the insulation. It takes a bit of practice to get use to.
Most of that doesn't come into play on home wiring because you are limited to the nominal amperage allowed for each of the smaller wire gauges. The higher THHN ampacities, for example, would just confuse people.
Yeah, I'm think that way as well.
Yeah, I've found the full charts on the Internet that includes the information about wire type. And I'll be checking with the local building office before I actually do anything. I'm still just exploring options at this point.
Yeah. The problem with plugging it in is that I'm looking at a 60A requirement and the standard plugs and receptacles stop at 50A. The welder doesn't even come with a plug - just a cord. They (Miller) suggests you hard wire it. If it's hard wired, then there's really not much issue if it's down sized for the welder. Even if someone later comes along and installs a 220V receptacle, the branch is likely to be more than large enough for whatever they are thinking of plugging into it.
Where I want the connection is about 60 ft from the service panel. So being able to down size it could save some money considering the cost of this size wire (#8 vs #4 for example).
However, what I'm leaning towards is putting a 100A subpanel in the basement where I want to relocate the rest of my shop. That would leave only about a 10 ft run to the garage where I need the connection for the welder. So then I can just put in a larger run to the welder because the short distance isn't going to save enough money to make a difference if I use the cheaper wire. It will also make it much easier in the future to add more 230 volt outlets in the garage for other equipment - as well as the shop equipment in the basement of course instead of having multiple 65 ft runs back to the main service panel which only has a few open slots as it is.
It's a popular fragrance commonly known as "Eau de Allen Bradley."
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.