Electrical Query (Metal Breaker Box)

Not always. I had one tell me he was going to get a court order to stop the electrical work on a Commercial UHF TV station I was building. He never came back, and the court never issued a stop work order.

We have an outlet in our dining room that appears to be a 220V 15A duplex outlet. It looks like a regular 110V 15A grounded outlet, except the blades for the plugs are both horizontal. It was presumably installed for a large window air conditioner before central air was installed. It is live, and I measured ~220V AC with a DVM across the two blades.

CY: Yep, sounds like a wall AC socket.

I'd like to convert this to a regular 115V 15A outlet. I assumed that I would find a dual lever 15A breaker in the panel box, and that I could just connect one of the hot leads to neutral and install a single phase breaker. I haven't had time to take the breaker box cover off the breakers, but there are NO 15A dual breakers in the box.

CY: Could be a dual 20. Or, it could be wired to two separate breakers. It "should" be wired to a double breaker, so both will turn off, if either one is tripped. However, it may "acually" not be such.

I'll pop the cover in a day or so when I have time. In the meantime, does anyone have any idea what I should be looking for inside the box that might identify the related breaker? I've got a breaker tracing gadget, but it's designed to plug into a 115V outlet. There is also no guarantee that the outlet & breaker hookup were done correctly.

CY: As you mention that it mgiht not be wired correctly, we're all just guessing. I'd suggest to pull the cover off the socket and look in with a flash light. See if the wires on the socket are black and red and white and bare. Probably so. Anyhow, that will help you to find the breaker that operates.

I don't know if the "ground" hole in the outlets is connected to a real ground or neutral, or how to tell.

CY: You need a helper with more knowledge of electrical work. We could probably talk you through it, but there is a good chance of something going wrong.

Thanks for any help or ideas.

Doug White

Splices acceptable, as long as there's enough room in the enclosure. Per NFPA70 2002:

************************ 312.8 Enclosures for Switches or Overcurrent Devices. Enclosures for switches or overcurrent devices shall not be used as junction boxes, auxiliary gutters, or raceways for conductors feeding through or tapping off to other switches or overcurrent devices, unless adequate space for this purpose is provided. The conductors shall not fill the wiring space at any cross section to more than 40 percent of the cross-sectional area of the space, and the conductors, splices, and taps shall not fill the wiring space at any cross section to more than 75 percent of the cross-sectional area of that space. *************************

Interesting! I took my "wiring for the homeowner" class at the local vocational school about 15 years ago. The instructor was adamant about no splices in a breaker box. Either I misunderstood, or they've tweaked the code since then.

It sounds like my box is OK. There's certainly a fair amount of space around all the splices.

Thanks!

Doug White

It was tweaked somewhere in that time frame. In the 1987 codebook splices are prohibited, then allowed by exception under pretty much the same conditions as in the current code. I have a guidebook based on the '93 code, and it also cites the exception.

I'm going to guess the exception was an addition, and prior to its inclusion splices *were* banned in the service panel, and it's taken many years for the word to trickle down.

For openers, I think they are more concerned with circuits that don't originate in the panel, and the panel is being used as a pullbox. Like one conduit with the hot leg going to a switch box, then running the switch-leg wire back to the panel, where it is spliced and leaves in a different conduit going up to the ceiling overhead light. That's what they are really trying to stop, and the "No Splices At All" was an extreme way to force it...

Consider that often local municipalities have Local Electrical Codes that are overly simple, this one would have been written in 1984-ish: "We accept the 1981 NEC In Whole as the City Electrical Code, with the following exceptions..."

Problem being, if they don't choose to update the legal basis behind it every few years, they could STILL be citing the 1981 Codebook in

2008. Most areas do skip ahead as needed, but most is not all.

"No Splices" is impossible, or I would never be able to do a simple panel upgrade without adding $1000 minimum to the bill. I'd have several splice boxes outside the panel enclosure to comply with the spirit of the law in those situations...

If you slide out an old panel and slide in a new one into the same physical space, there are always going to be a few cables where either the hot, neutral or ground aren't going to reach the new panel's bars. And with Romex in a completed house, there's no simple and quick re-roping, you need to bust open walls.

Do the work in a neat and tidy manner, and I've never been questioned on it.

HORROR STORY TIME:

But there is the one where another "allegedly licensed electrician" reworked a hair salon. The receptacles and cabling work was fine, but the old panel was a 12" wide Zinsco, not a standard 14-1/2" can...

She (note the pronoun, it will be important later) thought that rather than waste a lot of time and effort to rework the hole in the wall, she could put the new 200A panel surface mount over the top of the old 100A panel, route all the wires though the back of the new can with 2" chase nipples as bushings, have all the branch circuit wiring spliced in the old can on the wall (now totally inaccessible under the new can), and go up through the existing conduits into the drop ceiling...

And there were a few big corners cut in the power closet changing the meter main out to 200A that had to be totally reworked, too...

When the City Inspector gave her the Chuck Barris treatment (got out the big mallet and hit the Gong with great vigor) she first tried to Daisy Duke her way out by batting her eyelashes and playing dumb - which of course didn't work. Then she skipped town (with all the money) and left the tenant and landlord with a huge mess, with the DWP going "You'd better get this fixed and approved pretty soon, or we're turning off the power."

Guess who got to clean it all up... Hint: The building owners' son is my Dentist. ("Help!")

The inspector and I had a few minor roundy-rounds, but they mostly involved stuff that was grandfathered from 1966 original construction that we didn't touch, and he insisted HAD to be brought up to 2006.

Like Display Window dedicated receptacles - he wanted two, and one was enough up to a few years ago. And it was there, and working.

And he wanted us to go back and re-tie all the 1966 troffers to the

1966 wood-truss rafters with independent drop wires, so they wouldn't depend on the 1966 T-bars for support. He backed off on that one when I threatened to open up a few troffers and show him the date codes on the ballasts...

(But not the two I just changed the ballasts in.)

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