Need help with electric panel build..

[Wmeyer85]

Hey guys. To start off I'm no electrician. I got plans online to build my own 240v 30a control panel with 3000w elements. I followed all the steps and got the panel assembled. The panel turned on once it was plugged in. I have a drok volt meter on it that wont turn on. Everything else worked. As soon as I plugged in the 2 elements and the temp probes and pumps, the panel stayed on for about 5 minutes and then shut off on me. The fuse inside didnt blow, the breaker didnt trip. I can't seem to find out what went bad. The panel will not turn on anymore. Can anyone give me advice on what to look for? I have a couple pictures of what's in the box. I know it's not as clean as it should be.

 

[doug293cz]

Need a copy of the schematic for your build, and detailed pics from many angles of your wiring, in order to see where things might have gone wrong.

Brew on

 

[Wmeyer85]

 

[Wmeyer85]

These are the schematics I used to build. I will have to get pictures of the box in the morning

 

[Wmeyer85]

 

[Ladoit]

If it were me, I would take it apart and rewire the panel. Once I enlarged the photo's, you can see several wires with copper outside the plastic terminals. If any of these short, you're done. Re-crimp all of the terminals taking care that no copper is visible. Since you admit, you're not an electrician, maybe search for some video's on line about assembling wire and crimps.

 

[Bean]

I have to agree with @Ladoit

I would at the very least try isolating some of the components to see whats going on.. It looks like lots of things are piggy backing off each other instead of going back to your bus bars.. There is absolutely no reason to splice wires together or taping into them, replace all of those before even trying to turning this back on.

 

[bohdan987]

Sounds like either short somewhere or a bad connection or a loose wire. If you runed it under load with too thin wires they might of melted.

 

[JayDog]

Similar problem happened to me. My problem was that I had the plug supplying main power to the controller wired wrong. I had a red wire in the slot where the white was supposed to go. Check that, because it was the last thing I checked. Only after replacing a contactor 2 times did I think to check all the wiring starting from inside the outlet.

 

[Wmeyer85]

Similar problem happened to me. My problem was that I had the plug supplying main power to the controller wired wrong. I had a red wire in the slot where the white was supposed to go. Check that, because it was the last thing I checked. Only after replacing a contactor 2 times did I think to check all the wiring starting from inside the outlet.

The problem is the schematics show 4 wires coming in. A red, white, black and green. But I'm using a 3 prong so I just have a black, white and green. So should I put the black where it's supposed to go or where the red should go? Its definately burning out my main contactor. Thanks again!

 

[Bean]

Black = L1
Red = L2
White = common
Green = ground

So back and red are the same, each being 120 Volts. You will not be able to build a 240 system unless you use both red and black. you either need to upgrade your connection of build a 120 system.

 

[doug293cz]

The problem is the schematics show 4 wires coming in. A red, white, black and green. But I'm using a 3 prong so I just have a black, white and green. So should I put the black where it's supposed to go or where the red should go? Its definately burning out my main contactor. Thanks again!

Black = L1
Red = L2
White = common
Green = ground

So back and red are the same, each being 120 Volts. You will not be able to build a 240 system unless you use both red and black. you either need to upgrade your connection of build a 120 system.

I'm going to assume that you are using a 240V dryer or range receptacle to plug this unit in. Please verify that this is the case.

The three wires coming into your receptacle should be black, red, and green, but I believe it is fairly common to use the more readily available cable that has black, white, and green. You have two hot lines each at 120V referenced to ground, that are 180 degrees out of phase with each other, so that the voltage between the two hots is 240V. So, you should treat the white wire as if it was a red wire.

Your problem is that you cannot run that panel design on a three wire supply, that only makes 240V available. Your contactor coils are rated at 120V, as are the pumps. To get 120V in the panel, you need to have two hots, and a neutral. Your contactors are failing because you are putting 240V on the coils that are only designed for 120V. This causes the coils to fail in a short amount of time.

You could replace your contactors with units that use 240V coils (as well as replacing the alarm light/buzzer, and the LED block in the alarm switch, with 240V rated units), but you still wouldn't be able to run the pumps from your panel without burning them up. You could of course also replace the pumps with 240V units.

The easiest solution appears to be getting a proper 4-wire receptacle wired for this controller.

Brew on

 

[Bobby_M]

Black = L1
Red = L2
White = common
Green = ground

So back and red are the same, each being 120 Volts. You will not be able to build a 240 system unless you use both red and black. you either need to upgrade your connection of build a 120 system.

That's not exactly true. 3-wire cables just default to BLK, WHT,GRN but that doesn't mean you can't use the black and white for L1 and L2 and the green for ground (you can wrap some red electrical tape onto the ends of the white wires in this situation to make it easier to troubleshoot in the future). However, as Doug suggested you can't just swap a 4-wire design that uses 120v components and run it on a 240 volt-only 3-wire system. You can build a controller that only uses 240v but everything in that box has to be rated for 240v so that means no 120v pump control.

 

[Wmeyer85]

That's not exactly true. 3-wire cables just default to BLK, WHT,GRN but that doesn't mean you can't use the black and white for L1 and L2 and the green for ground.

What about the neutral? Everything is connected to the neutral so there wouldnt be a wore coming off the wire for that connection?

 

[Wmeyer85]

What about the neutral? Everything is connected to the neutral so there wouldnt be a wore coming off the wire for that connection?

*Sorry a neutral wire coming off the power connection

 

[Bobby_M]

Let me be very clear about this. If the schematic has four wires coming in and you don't, the entire product needs to be broken back down and redesigned. You cannot run 120 volts on this system so if your contactor coils are 120v no dice. You can't run 120v pumps on it either. If you have three wires coming in, that's hot, hot and ground. Without a neutral you don't have 120v. It's OK not to be an electrician and still be able to wire one of these things but you have to understand why 3-wire feeds are pure 240v and 4 wires are mixed 240v/120v.

 

[Wmeyer85]

Ok thanks. I'm going to change out the outlet for 4 prong and change my cable to 4 wire. It's going to be the easiest solution for my setup. Thanks everyone for the advice!

 

[Bean]

That's not exactly true. 3-wire cables just default to BLK, WHT,GRN but that doesn't mean you can't use the black and white for L1 and L2 and the green for ground (you can wrap some red electrical tape onto the ends of the white wires in this situation to make it easier to troubleshoot in the future). However, as Doug suggested you can't just swap a 4-wire design that uses 120v components and run it on a 240 volt-only 3-wire system. You can build a controller that only uses 240v but everything in that box has to be rated for 240v so that means no 120v pump control.

Your'e absolutly correct. But for someone who isn't an electrician I was just trying to keep the principles as simply as possible to the diagram being used.

 

[Wmeyer85]

Thanks everyone for the help and advice. I ended up running a 10g 4 wire to the breaker and making my dryer outlet a 4 prong and running a new cable for my panel. Everything works perfectly. Now time to brew! Cheers!

 

[doug293cz]

Glad you got your problem resolved, and can get back to brewing.

Brew on