I am finishing up the basement and have determined that I will need to add two circuits to the panel to provide for these outlets. My question is:
Should I install both circuits next too each other (one circuit breaker above the other in the panel) or skip one place. If I skip one place, this will allow for both hot leads to be in phase with each other and eliminate the possibility of ever getting between the two circuits for a 240 shock as well as a lot less wasted electricity through the capacitance of the wires being out of phase in the same conduit ?
I think you are thinking way to hard on this. Personally I'd make sure they were on different legs in the panel. When the meter on my bother-in-law's house fried a terminal he lost 1/2 the circuits in the house. Most of the living area was on the dead side of the panel, meaning until he could get an electrician to repair the meter box most of his house was going to be in the dark for an entire holiday weekend. We moved a couple circuits to the other side to give them some lights until the repair could be made.
Both of those concerns--potential shocks from out-of-phase conductors and capacitance losses--are totally unfounded. Put the breakers wherever you like; next to each other would make more sense, but if putting them on the same phase will let you sleep better at night, then do it that way.
Just don't think that your fears have any justification.
. OP is treating a straightforward job in a complicated manner!
Any 'capacitance loss' is hokey. Also by the way the two hot wires in a standard domestic North American 3 wire sytem are not actually 'out of phase'! The two wires are the opposite ends of a single phase 230 volt secondary winding of the distribution transformer. That winding is centre-tapped to provide the neutral.
At 60 hertz the capacitance coupling between two wires which run parallel and/or closely together for even several hundred feet is inconsequential. See note.
As suggested just put em wherever convenient.
Note: Using a typical capacitance per foot for wiring with a much closer or more intimate association of say 50 micro.microfarads per foot (that's 50 times 10 to minus 12!); we have for say 100 feet of wiring 10^2 x 50 x 10 minus 12 =3D 50 x 10 to minus 10!
At 60 hertz the amount of current that would 'leak' or couple through that very small amount of capacitance, provided that 'other' wire was connected and provided a path for the very slight capacitive coupled current to something, would be infinitesimal an inconsequential.
Now at radio frequencies of say a million hertz such coupling 'might' be of interest.
You're correct about the capacitance issue, but dead wrong about the phase thing.
North American domestic power does consist of two opposite ends of a center (notice spelling) tapped transformer; the two legs are 180° out of phase, which is about as close to "oppposite" as is possible to get.
*If you are feeding the circuits with a three wire cable which share the neutral, you must have the hot wires on opposite phases. If you are using two 2 conductor cables you can put the cables on whatever phases that you want. Ideally you want to balance the load as best as possible so that each phase has the same amount of current flowing through it.
I'd want the sockets on different legs. It's not common, but I know of at least two cases where one leg was cold. One time was AM, when we were about to start church services, and half the stuff didn't work. Another was after an ice storm. I was asked about supplying power to a guy's furnace. The furnace was on the cold leg, as the power co was going about restoring power.
I don't think the capacitance bit is a big issue.
It's not even a small issue. It's a non-issue.
You're dealing with very low-frequency AC here, which would require massive values of capacitance (many many microfarads) for there to be any measurable effect.
Sorry David; just because the two ends of a 'single phase' transformer winding have opposite polarity at any one moment, does not make them into separate 'phases'. Although the term phase is often (incorrectly) used for the two legs, A and B, of a domestic single phase electrcity supply.
And yes at any one moment in time (60 times a second in North America) the RMS voltages at the two ends will be opposite but 'in' phase. Both ends will pass through zero at the same point in time and then will pass through maximum potential of 1.414 times RMS at the same point in time.
In other words they 'are' in phase or synchronism.
Also if one wants to consider each end with respect to that centre tap* the 'top' end will peak at +169.7 volts (120 x sq.rt of 2) at same instant that the 'bottom' end will peak (negative) at -169.7 volts. That's 339.4 peak volts or 240 volts RMS between them.
It is possible to have separate 'phases' as in say a 3 phase commercial supply. As an example I have a couple of light fixtures that came from a super market rearrangement. In that case the voltage between the three separate phases which were truly 'not in phase' but
120 degrees apart, was an effective 347 volts RMS. Not 240 volt or 120 volts.
*BTW: 'Centre' is listed on page 117 of our Webster's dictionary published by Berkley Publishing, 200 Madison Av. New York. It's the old "You say tomAtoe and I say tomARto, thing. Eh?
One error/misuse that does aggravate though is 'meter'. The word 'meter' means something that measures, such as voltmeter, barometer, anemometer, micrometer etc. The correct term for wavelength, the standard measurment for measurement of length, distance, thickness etc. is metre, kilometre, millimetre etc. Same with 'litre' come to think of it.
Also btw have just thought of another way of demonstrating that single phase definition. Consider a typical two wire 240 volt single phase domestic supply to most UK homes. One end is live, the other is the neutral. No centre tap is used. So there is no Leg A and Leg B etc. At any one point in time the voltage between the two ends are opposite, one end is going postive or negative with respect to the other. Again that doesn't make the two ends into separate phases; thay are the opposite ends of the same phase.
Living in the middle east for a while we did encounter domestic 3 phase supply. The residential circuit breaker panel was in three sections, one for each phase of the four wire supply. Three pahse wires and a neutral. The various house loads were distributed among the three phases using single pole circuit breakers. There were no actual 3 phase loads. The voltage on each phase with respect to neutral was 230 volts RMS (50 hertz).
Have also encountered a couple of other weird arrangements; one where the service to a building was 230 volt RMS, 3 phase 'delta'. with no 'proper' neutral as it were. Instead one of the phases was centre tapped at the distribution transformer to provide a neutral with respect to the two adjacent phases. That created some real funny voltage combinations btween the neutral and the third phase and we had a couple of regular (but not very formally trained) electricians scratching their heads until it was explained (in fairly simple terms) what was going on an thy had to rethink some of their wiring. We replaced the whole lot later when a 3 phase standby generator was also installed. For DC and electronics trained guys we learned quite lot about AC supplies.
I think that's the crucial point, and what a lot of folk forget - well put.
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I was surprised when I moved UK->US at how much variation there is in US spelling and pronunciation for some words, where I'd grown up thinking there was just one way it was ever done in the US. Technically there probably is "one correct way", but the diversity is huge.
Well, just for the record, there *are* correct (and incorrect) spellings for each of the two "peoples separated by a common language" (i.e., the U.S. and U.K.).
F'rinstance, we (US) don't write:
o advertise, amortise ... any other verb forms ending in "-ise" o coloUr, neighboUr, etc. o theatre (although this is becoming distressingly more common) o aluminIum o treating corporations, etc., as plural, rather than singular entities (e.g., "Stanley do make ...", instead of "Stanley *does* make ...")
People who write this way here are usually guilty of affectation--that is, trying to fancy-up their writing by making it sound British, which is, supposedly, more "proper". (What this reveals more than anything, I contend, is that we colonists still suffer from a massive inferiority complex, lo these hundreds of years after our separation from the mother country.)
It would, of course, be just as improper for the reverse to occur (someone in the UK using US spellings, usages, etc.).
While I admit that much British usage sounds, to my 'Merkin ear, quaint, belabored and affected, I do grant them one thing: their "lift" is so much more succinct and elegant than our mouthful, "elevator". (I often wonder why we didn't go all the way with this word and call it "elevatorium", like "auditorium" in all its Greco-Roman glory.)
Yes, the theatre case is one that surprised me, as I seem to see theater/theatre in equal measure in the US.
I think I once read that 'aluminum' was originally the UK-English spelling, too, but at some point the UK ended up with the extra 'i'. I've become used to spelling it without the extra, but it still feels a bit strange to pronounce it that way!
'buoy' is the one I don't think I'll ever quite get my head around! :-) (I think I saw somewhere that the US pronunciation derives from French, or something, which is why it's not pronounced as 'boy' here)
That's an interesting one. I think I've seen both ways over in England, and it's not something I'd ever given much thought to before. I'm not even sure which I'd naturally use.
I'm really not sure there. It is a big country though, and there's a lot of regional variation in both spelling and terminology. When I first moved up here to the wilds of MN I kept hearing all these terms and assuming they were 'American' (i.e. national), only to later hear the exact same terms that I would have used in England in use elsewhere within the US.
"mother country" made me smile - the UK's been settled and invaded by so many groups in the past that I'm not sure anyone could really define what it means to be 'English' :-)
The strange thing there is that I grew up amongst farming folk in England, and 'elevator' was always the term for anything that raised something from one height to another - yet 'lift' is used in the UK when referring to people. I'm not sure what the reason is for the difference (although I suppose we talk about forklift trucks, not fork-elevator trucks, so it's not reserved exclusively for passengers).
MN, huh? I was there a couple of months ago, visiting family. I tried to annoy my sister as much as possible by trying out my Minnesota accent (dontcha know, etc.). My favorite phrase: "What a guy would want to do is ...". That Minnesota accent really is quite a prominent thing, isn't it?
There ya go--we'd *never* say "amongst", unless we're a) trying to impress our high-school English teacher, or b) trying to impress someone else. (And don't even get me started on "whilst". I think you have to whistle while you speak to make that one come out right ...)
Perhaps similar to the distinction in the UK between "taxi" and "cab", where over here they're two words for the same thing (or sometimes, just to make things more confusing, "taxicab").
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