Electric panel power cord. Will this work?

[sar_dog_1]

I found an extention cord that is listed as awg 10x3c. Is that the same as 10/3 cable?

I am building a kal clone and looking for a cord for power. 30 amp system.

 

[jeffmeh]

If it is 10awg, then it should handle a 30a panel. Does it have 3 conductors, or 3 conductors plus ground? You will need the latter for a Kal build. Also, what are you doing for a GFCI?

A link to the cord would be helpful also.

 

[sar_dog_1]

It is an extention cord so not sure. Dont want to cut it open if I am not going to use it. No link either as it is used. I think I will just buy the cord from hd.

 

[wbarber69]

You don't always need the neutral and the ground. In most places the code requires than the neutral and ground be tired together in the mains panel anyway. If your only doing a 30amp controller you don't need the neutral and the ground. They are redundant in a 50amp circuit but are necessary on the off chance that you dont have enough channel to ground to handle the heat dissipation of some circuits.


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[jeffmeh]

If you want to be able to run a 120v/240v panel like Kals, you need the neutral to derive the 120v circuit. You could certainly run a separate 120v circuit into the panel as an alternative. And for safety, you absolutely should ground your system.

 

[wbarber69]

If it's going to be inspected. You would "need" the neutral. But earth ground and neutral are a redundant system in the North American electrical grid. You can use just a ground and derive the circuit from that.


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[sar_dog_1]

Thanks everybody. I think I dont wanna mess around with safty and just order the cable from kal!

 

[jeffmeh]

"Can" is not "should." This is not an approach that I would recommend to an electrical novice who is trying to build a brewing system with sound safety margins.

 

[wbarber69]

What safety margins do you speak of. Neutral and ground are the same. I suppose your going to tell him he needs a 4 pole contact for his mains cord but then only a 3pole contact for the elements. If the neutral is so important then why isn't there a 3rd terminal on the element for a neutral wire. When the element comes in contact with water. Like I said before the only time you need an extra neutral is if you intend to run 2 240v elements off the same 50 amp feed. Which is only because a standard 50amp plug has 4 wires and 4 terminals in it. Open up your mains panel at home and look at the green terminal block and the neutral block. You'll see they usually have a wire or flat metal contact tying them together in the panel. It's all relative to how much metal you have syncing back to earth as to weather or not you need the extra wire. The only time I ever saw its usefulness in my 20 years as an electrician was on 1 job where a warehouse had 80 200w metal halide bulbs. We had even run a separate ground and neutral to every fixture but it wasn't enough copper to bring all the heat produced back to earth. We ended up having to tie in 2 ghost neutrals in the circuit to keep all the conduit from heating up and melting. Should you do everything to code, yes. But there comes a time where 1 extra wire in your control panel might keep it from closing or it might get in the way of something else. Or you end up with a big white #10 wire in there that doesn't connect to anything if you don't have any 120v circuits in there, and it can be rather confusing. Always follow the diagram if it exists.


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[scottyb710]

They are different but most 240 doesn't require a neutral. One is a grounded conductor and one is a non grounded conductor.

 

[wbarber69]

Wrong. The green ground wire is your channel directly back to earth. The white neutral is the power companies direct channel back to earth. The redundancy is there just in case either your ground or their ground gets severed.


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[jeffmeh]

What safety margins do you speak of. Neutral and ground are the same. I suppose your going to tell him he needs a 4 pole contact for his mains cord but then only a 3pole contact for the elements. If the neutral is so important then why isn't there a 3rd terminal on the element for a neutral wire. When the element comes in contact with water. Like I said before the only time you need an extra neutral is if you intend to run 2 240v elements off the same 50 amp feed. Which is only because a standard 50amp plug has 4 wires and 4 terminals in it. Open up your mains panel at home and look at the green terminal block and the neutral block. You'll see they usually have a wire or flat metal contact tying them together in the panel. It's all relative to how much metal you have syncing back to earth as to weather or not you need the extra wire. The only time I ever saw its usefulness in my 20 years as an electrician was on 1 job where a warehouse had 80 200w metal halide bulbs. We had even run a separate ground and neutral to every fixture but it wasn't enough copper to bring all the heat produced back to earth. We ended up having to tie in 2 ghost neutrals in the circuit to keep all the conduit from heating up and melting. Should you do everything to code, yes. But there comes a time where 1 extra wire in your control panel might keep it from closing or it might get in the way of something else. Or you end up with a big white #10 wire in there that doesn't connect to anything if you don't have any 120v circuits in there, and it can be rather confusing. Always follow the diagram if it exists.


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If he is running 240v only, then he only needs H-H-G. If he is deriving a 120v circuit in the panel, then according to you he can just do it off the ground and he doesn't need neutral? So are you advocating using a single wire as both a current carrying line at 120v and as a ground?

 

[jeffmeh]

Wrong. The green ground wire is your channel directly back to earth. The white neutral is the power companies direct channel back to earth. The redundancy is there just in case either your ground or their ground gets severed.


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Is that not a safety margin?

 

[wbarber69]

The term neutral means that when no power is supplied to the appliance then no current flows over the neutral. But when power is applied to hot then the neutral becomes live until it returns to earth. If you disconnect the neutral of an appliance while it is plugged in you will find that the neutral wire has current. But if you then attach this wire to ground the appliance will then come on. But if you apply the direct power to ground then you will short the system and trip a breaker. Electricity flows like water. You have a faucet and a drain. No drain and the sink overflows. No water and the drain is useless. Think about the neutral as the pipe that connects the water lines from each faucet together or the "common" line. And the ground as the drain line. The water comes in from the main pipe and eventually exits through the drain or earth connection. In most older electrical grids there is only hot wires present on the poles bringing high voltage power to your closest transformer. Which then converts that voltage like a resistor to derive 240v. That's where the "neutral" comes into play as you can see on these poles a wire travels from the transformer down the pole to earth. Newer grid systems may incorporate a 3rd or 4th high line wire that travels all the way back to the substation where it subsequently travels to earth. The term "neutral" only means that given a set of scenarios it's possible that wire could either be hot or ground depending on the switched state of said appliance.


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[wbarber69]

Or in the easiest laments terms I can think if to describe this. You must have a channel back to earth. Without power running through your panel, every wire is neutral.


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[wbarber69]

Does anyone live in an older home with only 2prong receptacles that carry no ground. Well then your ground wire is only present at the mains panel where a single wire leaves the panel and then is attached to a long copper rod drove into the earth. And every "neutral" wire is terminated at that ground wire.


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[scottyb710]

Buy you can't put a 3 write plug on a 2 wire system without a gif by code I'm a electrician. Neutrals carry current grounds don't.

 

[scottyb710]

Wrong. The green ground wire is your channel directly back to earth. The white neutral is the power companies direct channel back to earth. The redundancy is there just in case either your ground or their ground gets severed.


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Neutrals don't go to earth that's why that are called non grounded conductors.

 

[scottyb710]

They only bond at the first means of disconnect. Other than that they must be kept separate.

 

[wbarber69]

Neutral only caries current to ground. You can make that gfi work all you have to do is run the neutral to the ground terminal. It will still trip like it's supposed to. Remember the old grounded plug to 2 prong adapters that had a little screw hole for you to tie the ground lug back to the receptacle's faceplate. That's because all the metal in those old receptacles directly tied back to the neutral lug. And the only time a neutral wire carries any load is after the appliance has "applied" resistance between power and earth. Like I said before is you remove the neutral from the appliance and test it the neutral will be hot. But only because by disconnecting it, you remove its path to earth. And this voltage is only present when you test using a direct path back to earth. It's too hard to explain this to people who don't get it. You might have a job that has you installing lights and switches and receptacles all day and call yourself and electrician. I've been doing this for 20 years and learned most of what I know from trial and error when I was but a child. I learned about circuits and voltages the hard way before I started reading up and learning the math behind it all. I assure you that in a 120v situation you can use either the ground or the neutral for the same purpose. I wish I had taken more pictures or made a diagram of my 12x12x4 50amp 2 element control panel. Where I actually made a loop through all the components using the mains ground and terminating it back at the mains neutral coming in from the plug.


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[wbarber69]

They only bond at the first means of disconnect. Other than that they must be kept separate.

I guarantee you that if you tie any neutral to ground in your home it will have no effect.


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[scottyb710]

Yeah to bad I'm a commercial electrician and do high line work as well for are company.Yes it will work but It is not legal.

 

[scottyb710]

If you have afi breakers and they touch it will trip the breaker

 

[wbarber69]

No they wont


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[scottyb710]

I'm not saying it won't work I just like to do things by code.

 

[wbarber69]

I'm not abdicating that anyone go against code. I'm just saying that if you are comfortable with electrical wiring and don't want to spend an extra 100 bucks in redundancies then you can build a small effective control panel




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[scottyb710]

And yes combo afi breakers will trip if the ground touch's the neural try it.

 

[wbarber69]

I have they won't unless you remove the neutral from the circuit and tie it to ground first


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[scottyb710]

January 2009 Arc Fault Circuit Interrupters Frequently Asked Questions What are the wiring practices for AFCI? Wire the circuit as you would any other circuit according to the regulations of the local or state electrical code. Make sure that the circuit is clear from any grounded neutrals and does not share neutrals with any other circuits. If you have a shared or grounded neutral, the AFCI will trip instantly as soon as a load is applied. Standard thermal magnetic breakers will not identify the wiring errors, such as grounded or shared neutrals, in the system. Take care when running wires and making junctions and terminations. The AFCI will let you know if there is a wiring error by tripping.

 

[scottyb710]

You shouldn't give advice if it's unsafe that's why afi breakers are required in all new residential construction to keep home owners from burning their house down.