Wall outlet question

I have a 240 outlet with three wires to it, no other wires in the box. Is the wire that isn't hot a ground or neutral? And, can I just run an appropriately sized wire to my outlet? It's about four inches away from the main panel. The outlet is supplied by a 30amp 240v breaker.

It is what you want it to be.... currently if the plug that it feeds says 120/240v it is a neutral on a three wire system. If the plug says 240v then it is a ground. If you only need 240 v you really would have to open your panel to see where the wire is landed. If you need a 4 wire system no big deal either way just yank that wire out and throw in one that suits your needs.

Most likely it is two 'hots' and a ground, no neutral. Sounds like it is an older style dryer outlet. If your system is going to require a neutral, your going to need to replace the wire. You cannot use the bare wire for a neutral.

Ok, can I run a neutral from inside the breaker box to the outlet? It is a bare wire so that has to be ground and two hots.

I suggest you just replace the whole cable. Its like three dollars worth of wire if its just by your panel. You can't by code run a separate wire to the box, and hell if you're going to do that you just well run the corect cable. Old dryer recpets run "ungrounded" two hots and a neutral. The basically ran 10/2 romex and used the bare wire as a neutral. If you only have one electrical panel in your house and that panel has a main breaker in it, the place where the neutral and grounds terminate is the same place. so really it doesnt matter that much, whats is more important is what type of load you are looking to connect to that circuit.

Alright I'll just run a whole new 10/4 wire and outlet. Should be plenty cheap. Are the ground bus and neutral normally labeled in a main panel? I have one spot left in the panel for a 240v breaker.

take your panel cover off and take a looksie inside. It should be pretty obvious where things go. If you're unsure put a photo up on here I'm sure you'll get a response.

milesvdustin said:

Alright I'll just run a whole new 10/4 wire and outlet. Should be plenty cheap. Are the ground bus and neutral normally labeled in a main panel? I have one spot left in the panel for a 240v breaker.

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Inside the main panel they're effectively the same because they should be bonded together, so probably not labeled separately. In any sub-panel they'd be separate.

I'll go have a look tomorrow and see what's up. I've had too much home brew this evening to go messing around with electricity. I'm thinking of just adding a new breaker and a second outlet on top of the other one. I run my big ass air compressor off of the current outlet.

whoaru99 said:

Inside the main panel they're effectively the same because they should be bonded together, so probably not labeled separately. In any sub-panel they'd be separate.

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Agreed. If it is the main panel for the home, then most likely the grounds and neutrals share one large bar. If it's a sub panel, then the grounds and neutrals should have separate bars.

Yeah it's a home panel, out in my garage so it's easy to access. I'll dig into it this week. Now it's off to start baking for my pumpkin beer batch tonight!