220 volt from two 120 volt lines

Just found a 240 volt subpanel with a lighted switch and fuse housing at a garage sale, so looks like my 240 volt upgrade with just have to happen now. I've got two 120 volt lines running to my bk already. Plan on running one of the hots to my element through a switch and the other through a ssr/pid. Would hate to have to buy 20 feet of cable to run off the 240 outlet from my dryer.

Any reason I can't use two separate 120 volt line to a 240 element? Would I be able to rely on the gfci on each line or would I have to get a 240 volt gfci breaker? haven't wired 240 before so don't have a grasp of the big picture here

The ONLY two safe ways to get power to a 240V outlet are:
Run a 240V extension cord from your dryer outlet.
Put in a new 240V breaker in your box and wire a new plug on the wall where you want it.

NEVER EVER think it is safe to try to combine voltages for higher than capacity. The breakers aren't built for it. The wires themselves aren't rated for it. The insulation around your wires (and in your walls) is not rated to handle the excess heat. Inline GFCIs are NOT designed to protect from that. DO NOT MESS WITH 240V IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!

I'm not trying to be condescending here - I'm trying to save your life and keep your house from burning down. Find a local electrician that you like and offer him a case of mixed homebrews - he'll probably wire you up for free (especially if you have the breaker and new outlet on hand already). In most states, it isn't legal for you to alter 240V wiring without a license anyway - even if it is your house.

The easy answer is no... no you can't. For all the reasons listed by Darkbrood. Do it right the first time.

well.....theoretically it will work, provided each of the two legs were from different sides of your powerpanel, meaning two 120v lines 180* out of phase = 240v.
if they were from the same side of the panel, you'd only still have 120v just double the current capacity. which would be good if you were after a 120v / 2500w heating element.
but....the safe bet is to spend the $50 on 20ft of 10GA cable and be confident you won't burn down your house just to make some beer.

Meter AC voltage across the two hot leads, does it read 240VAC or 0 VAC? This will tell you if the phasing is correct for a 240VAC circuit.

It's not safe. Don't do it.

Code is written the way it is, for a reason.

That being said, just yesterday my wife asked me how to 'convert' a 110v outlet to 220v. After holding back the laughter i just told her that they needed to have an electrician do it, and that they might as well put the new outlet wherever they wanted it, because the electrician would have to run new wire.

Then I was discussing this at work with the guys as a 'funny story', and this retarded medic from Tennessee was like (country accent) 'well all you really need to do is run another 120v cable next to that first one, and hook up the hots together so there are two wires per hot, it will work just fine'. I was just like 'wow'.

I just felt those two anecdotes were semi applicable to this situation. Follow code, do things properly, and you wont burn your **** down.

Basically, that's what you do when you run the power from a 240v breaker, it's just two 120v breakers tied together at the handle. Like it was stated before, your two lines would have to be out of phase to work. 240v breakers naturally make the two lines out of phase by way of panel design.

Now, should you go ahead and do this? Speaking from experience as a 15 year journeyman electrician the answer would be "No". It wouldn't be up to code and it would be way too easy to get the lines crossed somewhere down the road. Wait if you have to to save the extra cash you need to do it right. Electricity is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.

Two atoms were walking down the street one day, when one of them exclaimed, "Oh no - I've lost an electron!" "Are you sure?" the other one asked. "Yes," replied the first one, "I'm positive."

Ode to the Missing Surge Protector

If a transient hits a pocket on a socket on a port
And the bus is interrupted at a very last resort
And the access of the memory makes your floppy disc abort
Then the shocked packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash
And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash
Then your situations' hopeless and your system's gonna crash.

If the label on the cable on the table at your house
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse
But your packets want to tunnel to another protocol
That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss
So your icons in the window are as fickle as a grouse
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang
'cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang.

Remember : There are Old Electricians and there are Bold Electricians BUT there are no Old Bold Electricians.

Sometimes we brewers get so excited about our hobby it is a good idea to relax and take a deep breath. When we are designing our equipment to be used around our homes it is important to ask ourselves, "If the house burned down, would there be any possibility the insurance company could wiggle out of a claim by showing I did something illegal or dumb?"

Depending on your answer, a hundred bucks to pay a professional to configure what we need may not be so expensive.

Electricity is like a slot machine... we can all describe what it does, but very few people understand how it works. Most electricians will scare you to death when it comes to working with electricity... part of this is self-serving (if there were more electrical DIYers, there would be fewer electricians), but most of it is truth - electricity kills.

That being said, you don't have to be a genius to understand electric theory and code, but it does take time to learn. IMO, jumping right into wiring a 240 receptacle would be tantamount to building a basement brewery without having even brewed your first batch... it can be done, but the best (and safest, in this case) knowledge is gained through experience & consultation.

I'm not an electrician, but I do feel comfortable performing limited tasks with electricity... however, I've probably spent no less than 40-60 hours reading how-to's, beginner's guides, intermediate theory, NEC, NFPA, (not to mention consulting with a friend who's an electrician by trade) for the most remedial projects (replacing basement & kitchen receptacles with GFCIs, putting my sump and ejector pumps on dedicated circuits, testing continuity of ground and replacing conduit where necessary, rewiring circuits where polarity was reversed, etc.) and honestly, I would only feel comfortable wiring a 240v receptacle to code if I could run a dedicated circuit through EMT to the main panel -- I would never try to run it via existing 110/120 lines even if I knew and could verify they were out of phase... there's more to consider than just the phasing of the lines - circuit capacity/load & condition of the wiring as two examples - when it comes to DIY electrical work. Trust your instincts, but more importantly, know your limitations. The perfect batch of beer isn't worth the prospect of never brewing again.

Well....... so you guys are saying no?

So here's the next question, since I'm gonna tie into my existing 240 breaker Is there a way to incorporate a gfci between the breaker box or should buy a gfci breaker to replace the normal 30amp breaker in my box?

If you are going to install a GFCI breaker anyway, why not just make it a dedicated one, instead of tying into the existing one?

You could, but shouldn't. (depends on a lot of factors if it even can be done)
240 line vs 2x120 line is purely cost.

its all the same as far as wiring goes. You can even get it to code (depending on local laws) as long as you mark the wires correctly.

Surly said:

Sometimes we brewers get so excited about our hobby it is a good idea to relax and take a deep breath. When we are designing our equipment to be used around our homes it is important to ask ourselves, "If the house burned down, would there be any possibility the insurance company could wiggle out of a claim by showing I did something illegal or dumb?"

Depending on your answer, a hundred bucks to pay a professional to configure what we need may not be so expensive.

Click to expand...

+1

I would also ask myself what if a member of my family or a friend was electrocuted as a result of my amatuer electrician work.

Interestingly in Australia website forums are fairly strict on not allowing these sorts of discussions that could aid or encourage untrained persons to perform what would be in Australia illegal electrical work. I do believe things like gas and electrical work should only be done by licensed tradesmen. I do however realize that electrical work is much less regulated in the US and that may be in some part due to the fact that 240V and 415V residential supply voltages are not so common as in Australia.

If you are going to install a GFCI breaker anyway, why not just make it a dedicated one, instead of tying into the existing one?

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Don't think I have room for another 240 breaker. If i can get gfci between my panel and rig i'll do that. If not, i'll just put a gfci breaker in. Either way i'll just not run the dryer while brew.

Ok ok so is there a way to put gfci between the panel and my brew rig? or i should say what is the most cost effective way?

spa sub panel? dryer cord with gfci?

Leaning towards running a spa panel or just running one more 120 volt line for a heatstick. Another 120 volt line would be cheaper for sure. The reason i posted this thread originally was because it's a waste not to use the two 120 volt lines I already have from my main panel to my rig.

$50 spa panel from home depot is the most cost effective way.

The breaker in the spa panel will be rated for more amps than your main breaker but that isn't important.

Main breaker provides overcurrent protection.
Spa panel provides ground fault protection.

Have a menards near me and they have a spa panel for $86 but it has the extra breaker mounts for 120 lines within the box. I can't really see the inside so i'm not sure how it works, but could it be wired so the gfci comes before the 120 volt breakers within the box? That way you could protect everything with gfci and also have breakers for your individual 120 lines. Anyone have one who could look into it?

Bugaboo,
Take a photo of the panel and post it here. I want to see if that panel is really full. May be a bunch a full breakers with room for twin and quads. I'll run a load calc on it and see if it is okay. Also want to know panel type and feed size (amps) to the panel.
Sparky

More i think about it I'm pretty sure I'm gonna order the box from homedepot for $50, since all my 120 lines are already ran to my brewstand. Next time I'm at menards I'll take a pic and write down some info on the more expensive box so if someone wanted to use it in the manner I described Sparky could give us some info on how it would work

here's a pic of homedepot $50 dollar spa panel:

did you add those labels?
it does not compute

also, you sure both lines aren't from the same breaker?
and did you check to make sure they are out of phase?

It's not my pic. I don't think it says anything about the power sources. It just shows where the wires go in the spa panel. It's not really any plan I've made just a pic

Just a heads up, it shows the input as a 30 amp or 50 amp but the GFCI breaker shows 50 amp. You don't want to use 30 amps to feed this because your circuit protection will not work properly.

MadViking said:

Just a heads up, it shows the input as a 30 amp or 50 amp but the GFCI breaker shows 50 amp. You don't want to use 30 amps to feed this because your circuit protection will not work properly.

Click to expand...

Circuit protection will work fine if you feed this with a 30A source.

The 30A non-GFCI breaker in the main panel will be providing overcurrent protection at 30A. The 50A GFCI breaker in the spa panel will be providing GFCI protection only.

Walker, will you consider changing your avatar?

It scares the #%^# out of me!

Sorry... this is my halloween costume this year. You'll have to wait until November for another change.

Will you lose your GFI protection of you run the NEUTRAL back to the bar instead of to the other end of the pigtail on the breaker?

If you are referencing the picture above, and you are asking about connecting the yellow neutral from the right-hand side of the box to the neutral bus on the lower left of the box, then you will have an output on the right-hand side that is really just like having two hot lines and two 'ground' lines (*). Any attempt to power a 120V device will cause the GFCI to immediately trip because the breaker will not have visibility onto the yellow wire.


(*) by this I mean that the yellow line is not allowed to carry current.

HHP said:

That being said, just yesterday my wife asked me how to 'convert' a 110v outlet to 220v. After holding back the laughter i just told her that they needed to have an electrician do it, and that they might as well put the new outlet wherever they wanted it, because the electrician would have to run new wire.

Click to expand...

Old post, but relevant to something I'm doing.

If you had a 120V 20 amp outlet with 12-2 running to it, couldn't you put a 240V breaker in your panel and hook both black and white to it and change to a 240v 20 amp outlet? This would give you the ability to run a 4000W 240V element.

You could either use a GFCI breaker or a 240V GFCI extension 7348K54 (kind of pricey from mc master.)

Any problems with this?



edit:
Just thinking. If there was more than one outlet on the circuit, you'd have to convert them all to 240V.

Ok thank you. Fixed and tested.

Anoldur

edit:
Just thinking. If there was more than one outlet on the circuit, you'd have to convert them all to 240V.

Click to expand...

That's the only problem. You also have to color the wire in the panel to show that it is no longer a neutral.

yjfun said:

You also have to color the wire in the panel to show that it is no longer a neutral.

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Is that new code or something? My dryer has 10-2 running to it, white, black and ground. The white wires going to the breaker or at the dryer end are not colored in any special way.


Asking because I ran a dedicated 220V 20 amp line to my kitchen for a 3500W induction hot plate. Since you can't put a 120V plug in the outlet, I didn't see a problem with the color coding. Suppose someone could get into trouble down the road if they thought they could just change the receptacle to get 120, but that would be pretty dumb a$$. :cross:

Actually I ran 10-2 thinking that if I ever wanted to switch to something 30 amp, I'd have the option. In hind sight, I should have run 10-3 to cover all bases.

I don't know when they changed that rule and the oldest code book I have around the house is a 2005 and it's in there. I know that inspectors have made us recolor the wires since at least 2000.

Just to clarify any time you use the white wire for anything other than a neutral you must color both ends of it any color other than white, gray, or green.

It does seem like a large amount of the code was written to protect stupid from hurting himself. Common sense does not prevail.

Wire from 6 gage and lighter (ie - 6, 8, 10, 12, 14) needs to be color coated and not putting tape over it. This is strictly enforced in my area, but may not in other areas.

In the case of the 10-2 dryer, using the black and white as hots on the 240V, they should (at least) tape both ends of the white wire with red (or black) indicating that it is used as a hot.

Consider codes to be the least-common-denominator. They are basic. Go beefier and protect more.

We are allowed to use tape in my area but I usually just color it with a sharpie.

yjfun said:

We are allowed to use tape in my area but I usually just color it with a sharpie.

Click to expand...

+1 that's what everyone round here does.