Just a little background first. I'm trying to wire up a 220 outlet for the stick welder my grandpa gave me. So, I open up the breaker box and I have open space for the cicuit. Awesome! Whoever wired up the house didn't really pay much attention to which bus bar was ground and which one was neutral. Not so awesome... Anyway, he's got the two bus bars tied together with a bare multi-strand ground wire and also has both bus bars grounded to the big pole burried in the ground. So, I'm pretty sure my neutral bar is pretty well grounded. Now, I'm trying to wire up this outlet and my question is: do I have the hot wires going to right poles? I'm pretty sure I do, but it's just a sanity check for me. Next up, should I wire both the ground and the neutral to the same pole in the outlet, or wire the neutral to the pole in the outlet and to the "neutral" bus bar and attach the ground wire to the outlet case, and then run that to the "ground" bus bar. Would there be a difference? Thanks for any help.
If the outlet only has 3 terminals it only requires two hot & the ground the neutral is not used. If it has 4 terminals then you use all four. If you bought 4 strand wire just don't use the neutral. Don't cut it off though just fold it up back in the box. You might be able to use it later for some other equipment. Also the neutal bus bar and ground all are grounded to the same ground, that is normal. Good luck
black and red are hot....single phase doesn't mater which side you attach white is netural...return bare copper or green is ground......cabinet ground....or attach to box GND screw I have wired up 3 homes and 2 garages. just be sure you have the breaker off. got stood up and tossed back 10 feet once for not checking if it was live.....IT WAS Here is a link to instructions. http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=howTo&p=Improve/220outlet.html Robert
So, is there no return on a 220 volt system? EDIT: Sorry for the aweful picture I didn't think it would look that bad going from a bmp to a jpg.
yes there is....the white is the netural / return. most of the time it is the same size as the hots. the ground is much smaller and is usually tied to the outlet "GND" Screw(which should be in your box you showed) or in the case of a hard wired compressor, it is tied to the metal housing. that way if for some reason a hot comes loose and touches the appliance it shorts to gnd (Same spot in box as netural) and trips the breaker so you don't touch an entergized metal casing. Robert
Black wire to the left lug, red wire to the right lug. If this is for a typical 240V recept. then there is no neutral wire, just a ground wire and it connects to the center lug. The only time you would have a neutral wire is if you needed a 240V/120V 4 wire recpt. like for a RV hook up where they need both 120V and 240V power. The neutral wire carrys the unbalanced load between the 2 phases( if A phase was 10A and B phase was 5A then the neutral would carry 5A). Since you only need 240V power you have no need for a neutral wire. If the panel you're feeding from is the main panel (service entrance), then it's acceptable for the grounds and grounded conductors (white) to be connected to both the neutral and ground buss bars since they need to be bonded together anyways, so just connect the red and black conductors to the lugs in the breaker and the ground to an available spot in either one of the neutral/ ground buss bars.
Here's a better picture. Tested it out with my new multi-meter and I have 240ish from red to black and 120ish each from the hot to the white. Success!!
Your going to stick that screwdriver WHERE??? Yeah, that drawing looks nothing like the picture above. Actually, I hired my 240 out. I don't trust anything over 120, and when I bought my big air compressor, I was too scared to run it myself.
Well, that's because it doesn't have the face on it. It wasn't that big of a deal at all. The hardest part was running the wire. Once I decided to run it out the bottom of the box and then through conduit the hard part was over. Having the multi-meter made me much more confident when it was all said and done.
I would separate the neutral and ground wires on to their own buss bars in the breaker box. The ground buss bar should connect to the earth ground you mentioned. You really should have a bare or green wire going from the ground buss bar to the ground screw and metal receptacle plate of the outlet. Also the strip length on that red wire looks way too long, almost touches the ground terminal. And the black wire looks like insulation is under the pressure screw.
Okay, so I realize this is neither helpful nor on topic, but your diagram looks like a really depressed stick figure. ...and now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
