Piggy-backing new 125v outlet on existing 250v outlet?

[Chris Lewis]

According to zxcvbob :

Despite having written the electrical wiring FAQ, I don't keep the plug/receptacle specs in my head. Sigh. Oops ;-)

Still bad of course ;-)

[nehmo54]

- zafdor -

- Nehmo - We are not automatons, and in real life, it's not desirable nor necessary to always adhere to the NEC. In any case, someone claiming something is in violation of some code or law, should cite the code or law.

--

********************

• Nehmo Sergheyev * *********************

[TURTLE]

This is Turtle.

You don't need to look for the Red wire when over loaded. All you need to do is pile some paper on the wires and it will give you a signal fire to tell there is a problem. Red wire are hard to see in attic but a signal fire will be seen real good.

TURTLE

[Chris Lewis]

According to TURTLE :

Even better, wrap the wires around your finger. You'll find out about overloads even faster than with signal fires.

[zxcvbob]

I usually just touch my tongue to the wire see if it's hot. HTH :-)

Bob

[JimE]

I have read this thread with interest since I am facing a simila

situation. The wiring in my cement-walled older home was run inside th walls when they were poured, making adding new wiring very difficult. have just remodeled a bedroom suite and replaced a pullman-styl one-piece stove/sink/fridge metal unit with new cabinets and a drop-i cooktop, new frdge, etc. The problem is that there is only a 240v wire outlet on that wall. This outlet is what powered the old unit which also had 120v outlets on it that were powered by this outlet. need a 120v outlet to power the new fridge and it appears that the onl reasonable option is to tap off one of the hot legs. All three outle wires are insulated and all the ground and neutral wires in my hous are attached to the same bus bar in the distribution panel. The outle is powered by a 30 amp breaker. While I understand that the codes exis for a reason, I also know that most older homes do not meet curren codes. And don't most stoves and ovens have 120v loads supplied b their 240v breaker? What exactly is the risk of my plan? There must b some level of acceptable risk of non-compliance or most of the olde homes in the US would be uninhabital due to code non-compliance

-- Jim

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[Chris Lewis]

According to JimE :

The main difficulties people encounter switching 240V outlets over to 120V is that the result isn't breakered properly and/or has no ground.

Or they try to mix 240V and 120V devices on the same circuit. Yes, stoves and dryers are such, but they're single devices, not multiple. There's a reason why stoves and dryers are supposed to be the _only_ things on their circuits.

You say that you have a 240V 3 wire receptacle in the wall with other 120V outlets attached to it. This is illegal for at least three reasons:

1) The 120V outlets cannot have proper grounds. Ground != neutral, potentially quite dangerous. 2) The 120V outlets are inherently breakered at 30A - highly dangerous. 3) Mixture of different voltages for seperate devices.

The closest you can get to "right", without pulling new wire, is to rearrange the wiring in the panel so that it's a single 120V circuit on a 15A or 20A breaker (with oversize wire, but that's okay). Which ends up needing to use an insulated wire as ground - you have to use the white as neutral - so that means you'll have to use a black or red as ground.

Code-wise that's illegal, but an inspector may permit it if you have no other reasonable alternative.

[nicksanspam]

Note the words "on it." I suppose it would be legal to plug a fridge into one of those outlets, if you didn't remove the old unit. If you removed the front door of the old oven, would it still be legal to plug the fridge into one of the 120 V outlets? Probably so. And if you removed the range top? Probably so. And if you removed the racks in the oven? Probably so. And if you removed everything else you could unbolt or cut off, leaving only the outlets, dangling by wires...? :-)

Essentially duplicating what was on the old unit, with no change in the existing level of safety. I wonder if there's some way to improve the level of safety with something like a gfi, with no new wiring...

Nick

[EXT]

If you care to check, the outlet(s) on the old stove had their own 15 amp fuses in the stoves fuse panel to protect the wiring and outlet, what you propose will not have such fuse protection.

[JimE]

There were a couple of fuses downstream of the junction box on the ol pullman unit, so it seems likely that at least one was for the 120 outlets. I still need both 240v for the cooktop and 120v for th fridge. The outlet box is in a cabinet under the sink. Would it b better to install a one breaker mini-panel with a 15 amp breaker unde the sink between the 240v outlet and the 120v outlets? I live in the U Virgin Islands and the standards are quite a bit lower than back in th states. I seriously doubt that an inspector will ever see this wirin and I suspect they would not have a problem with it if they did

-- Jim

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[Scott Willing]

== warning non-expert rambling ==

Wouldn't the main concern be to protect the 120V outlet with a suitably-rated breaker? As another poster pointed out, the outlets in the range were presumably protected by 15A fuses or breakers.

Any reason you can't replace the original dual breaker with two 15A singles? You could even break the link between the hots on the outlet, and feed each half of the duplex socket with a different circuit that way. Seems to me the result would be essentially equivalent to what they specify for kitchen outlets these days. Or just put in one 15A breaker and let the other leg be dead.

If I'm wrong I'm sure someone will let me know. :-)

-=s