220 wiring for spa

[Richard J Kinch]

If you connect them together, they are DEAD SHORTED. Whether anything "happens" doesn't change that fact.

[Chris Lewis]

By the same definition, the two ends of a single wire are "dead shorted to each other". What useful information does that yield?

Zip.

The term you're using completely obfuscates the real result: no current flow, no breaker trip, device simply doesn't do anything.

[Matt]

Ah, but did Doug tell him to deenergize the circuit? How can you be sure the OP will do it?

But, since the breaker trips, lets just assume that the circuit is dead, and go on a hypothetical:

What if the OP thinks he has found the short, say maybe a cable clamp too tight.

So he yells to his wife to flip the breaker.

And then we find out that the good news is that yes, the OP found and corrected the short. The bad news is that some part of his body is in contact with a now exposed circuit. And now the homeowner is dead.

Or, perhaps the HO finds the short in the cable, repairs it with electrical tape, installs the hot tub, and all is well.

Until the one night somebody splashed a bit too much water outside the tub, and now there are multiple fatalities.

Can't everyone now sue Doug? Didn't Doug tell someone to go look for a short?

Would the homeowner/and or guests be dead if Doug hadn't told him to look for a short, and instead kept silent or told him to call an Electrician?

Info is Info, good or bad.

If people can die from bad info, then it's also true that good info can kill them.

[Richard J Kinch]

Glib nonsense. It changes the diagnostic possibilities, and must be ruled out. A backfeed somewhere would cause the behavior described.

[Doug Miller]

Not exactly. But it's no surprise to me to discover that subtle distinctions are lost upon you.

Possibly not.

No, Matt, I told him to re-check his connections. He doesn't have "a 220v line to a spa" - the spa isn't hooked up yet. He has a 220v line to nothing, and he wired it wrong somewhere.

Not particularly, given that he's *already*doing* the wiring. Nothing I can say will change that.

Proving once again that Matt can't tell the difference between good advice and bad...

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Doug Miller]

No, they're not. They're connected in parallel. It's not the same thing at all.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Doug Miller]

Chris, you have to cut Richard a bit of slack. In case you're not familiar with some of his other posts, you should know that Richard comes from a planet where it's safe to drink gasoline and breathe carbon monoxide, but borax is a deadly poison. So it shouldn't be much of a surprise to discover that electricity works a bit differently in his universe, too.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Doug Miller]

Yes, they can - if the breaker is placed so that the two hots are on

*opposite* legs of the service.

No, it does not. With the breaker positioned so that both poles are on the

*same* leg of the service, the two hot conductors are at exactly the same potential. Connecting them together has no effect. Same potential = no current flow = no circuit = no short circuit.

Oh, really? Do tell. Where is this mysterious backfeed going to come from, and what sort of problems will it cause?

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Richard J Kinch]

My definition of "shorted" is an unintentional low-impedance connection. Dunno what yours is.

[Richard J Kinch]

Given that none of the usual explanations solve the observed behavior, the critical diagnostician will start eliminating the plausible but odd possibilities. I've seen this problem before.

[Doug Miller]

Mine is "an unintentional low-impedance connection between an ungrounded circuit conductor and something that is grounded".

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[trader4]

"If you connect them together, they are DEAD SHORTED. Whether anything

"happens" doesn't change that fact. "

But the fact is the OP had a problem where he gets an arc and trip when he closes a disconnect. That indicates a short causing high current. That can't happen because two hots on the same leg happen to be connected together, resulting in zero current flow. It has to be a short from the hot to either neutral or ground.

[Goedjn]

Dude, you're babbling. Putting the breaker in the wrong position will not and can-not cause a dead short. If you *HAVE* a dead short, then putting the breaker in the wrong position, in systems where that's possible, causes nothing to happen, where loud and exiting things would happen were the breaker in the RIGHT place.

In OPs case, there's a breaker at the service panel, and a disconnect in some other box downstream. When the disconnector is open, nothing happens. When the disconnector is closed the first breaker pops.

Now at this point, a description of this second disconnector would be useful, But if it's built like a DPST switch, then the most likely explanation is that it's wired sideways, with the high and low feeds from the service panel connected to the input and output of the same arm in the breaker. The other possibility is that the output side of at least one arm on the breaker is connected to the nuetral or safety ground, or shorted out somewhere. You can figure out which by disconnecting everything except one of the hots, and putting a voltmeter from the terminal that the OTHER hot was connected to to ground, with the disconnect closed. If you get voltage, you know that that's the OUTPUT of the currently hot leg.

[Richard J Kinch]

Only with a single-fault hypothesis, which hasn't been tested.

Good diagnosis is hard.

[Richard J Kinch]

Leaving aside from the quibble about "short", only with a single-fault hypothesis, which hasn't been tested.

[Richard J Kinch]

OK, then you're being consistent with your definition, such as it is.

[Doug Miller]

It's certainly a more useful definition than one which equates parallel-connected wires with a short circuit. You certainly have some unusual ideas; apparently, the physics on your planet is as bizarre as the toxicology.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Doug Miller]

Wrong again.

If two points are at the same potential, it is _impossible_ for there to be any current flowing between them, without regard to the number or location of faults in the circuit.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Doug Miller]

Let's see your explanation for this howler.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Richard J Kinch]

Yet yours requires a ground? Two hot phases can't short to each other?

The truth can seem bizarre, especially to the uncritical masses.

I think you hounds should take up a collection and dare me to swallow a shot of petroleum distillate. The jejune mockery ought to have stopped by now.