220 Question

Sorry folks for being dumb

I been reading on this newsgroup and the other working groups about running

220 verses 110. Does that mean I would have to have a 220 t-saw to run 220 or can I run my 110 t-saw on 220? does 110 convert in the breaker box (fuse Panel) too 220?

I will be building a 30 X 40ish dog house for my playpen for an escape from the real world in the spring and I know I will have 220 for my mig welder because it is a 220 plug... and also 20 amp 110 plugs all over or can I do better?

Sorry this is the deepest I know on elect.

I do want to run everything as efficient as I can and get the most power I can with out popping breakers or running sluggish.

Please tell me what I do not know if you have to time.

Don D.

Reply to
Don D.
Loading thread data ...

Many motors can be wired to run on 110 volt or 220 volt. It is a simple task IF the motor can ber converted. Usually there is a wiring diagram inside the electrical box on the motor. Then you need to run wire and a 220 outlet for the power tool. With your level of expertise you may want someone to give you a hand! Greg

Reply to
Greg O

Don, if your equipment is already wired for 110 then I would leave them alone. Typically 220V would be used when your equipment is rated

2-3HP or above. Your TS is probably 1 1/2 HP and could be run on either 110 or 220 but, as I said, there is marginal benefit to wiring the 1 1/2 HP motor to 220.

TWS

formatting link

Reply to
TWS

Would you consider not stalling the motor and tripping breakers when the going gets tough a marginal benefit?

Reply to
Leon

If it can be changed, it will probably note the amperage for both voltages on the nameplate.

If the wiring diagram is not inside the electrical box, or in the owner's manual, you can probably get it from the manufacturer.

And don't forget, you also have to change the plug.

Reply to
toller

I think the operative factor here is that he's setting up new. When I put my power in, I figured there was so little in the way of extra time/energy/expense to installing 220 that it didn't make sense _not_ to do it. For my one-man shop, one run of 220 around the baseboard, then about 15 minutes per machine to change motor wiring and I'm done. Lotta benefit for little work. However, If I had an existing shop with _only_ 110, I'm not sure I'd have bothered to run an extra line, figuring the occasional tripped breaker and the "110 is less powerful under load" argument wouldn't justify the effort.

New construction is just so much easier than retrofitting, y'know?

Michael "If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing" Baglio \\Extra expense of installing 2 extra circuits and running 4-outlet boxes on every other stud: maybe a couple hundred bucks, tops. \\Ability to plug something in "Right HERE", and not have to settle for "somewhere way over there": Priceless! :)

Reply to
Michael Baglio

Guys Thanks for all your input. I am thinking about my new shop and making sure I have the power like Michael B. saw. I can bare with the lack of outlets and space in the garage I am in now, But I will not have a lack of power and space in my new shop if I do my home work now instead of rushing the week before.

Reply to
Don D.

You need 220v to run 220v machines. A motor wired for 110 should only be run on a 110v circuit. Some motors can be wired for 220v, and these will have a sticker diagram for such conversion. A 220v appliance should not have a plug on it that looks like most 110v. appliances (Usually one prong is turned or the two prongs are slanted.)

You can't have too many outlets in a shop. I have four 220v outlets on one circuit, and about thirty 110v outlets on 4 circuits. Keep the lighting on a separate circuit. A "circuit" has one circuit breaker or fuse. Also, you should have a ground-fault interrupt on each circuit for safety.

Leap-frog your outlets. Inspect your main breaker/fuse box.

Reply to
Phisherman

I had to get an electrician - it would have taken me years to read enough to feel safe fooling with the outlets and volts. Even so, in the end I was still popping breakers with the router, the guy said I would just need to swap the router for something else. On one of my better days I realized the router would run off the circuit for the laundry which had an extra plug receptacle. I used the shortest extension cord possible and ran it the shortest overhead route and that was that.

Josie

Reply to
firstjois

Whoops, my mistake. I thought this was an existing building (I'm embarrassed to say I took his comment about building a doghouse literally). You are absolutely right, if I were building a new workshop I would put 220 conduit in the ceiling or flooring so I could direct wire any new equipment I installed. The 220 could be split to

2 x 110 circuits or a single 220 circuit. After using a 3HP TS I could NEVER go back to something running on 110...

Like Mike said, anything worth doing is worth overdoing...

TWS

formatting link

Reply to
TWS

Sorry for not being a real electrician. :-)

The short answer is yes.

Only if you rewire it for 220 which you may or may not be able to do.

I'm sure someone can come up with an exception here, but breaker boxes have a 220 line coming in. It's usually four wires. A neutral, a ground, and two 110 volt lines in different phases. For 110 lines, you plug in a 110v breaker and that's what you get. For 220 lines, there's a bigger breaker that spans both sides and adds the voltage together giving you 220.

Put the lights on their own circuit so that if you trip a breaker, you can still see.

I did *a lot* of research, then ran my own sub panel to my garage. I put in four 110 lines and two 220 lines. I also rewired my saw to

220. It all works great.

brian

Reply to
brian lanning

guys I went to my friendly ACE is my place and bought 2 books on wiring that may help me out also (yea right) so I do not look or think so dumb. (some of this can not be helped with a book) I also can say I have learned a lot from all of you in regards to what to do when I build my shop (dog house). I really thank you all for your input, Don't stop, more is good. saves me time reading these damn books of stuff that does not interest me. Don

Reply to
Don D.

In most cases you do not need to "convert" 110 to 220 or vice versa once the juice comes to your house. The power company has a transformer near the house and distributes to the house 220 volts, center tapped. That means that halfway through the secondary winding on the transformer, they bring out a tap. This center tap is grounded. (Long copper stake driven into the ground). Between each of the "hot" leads and the "center" you get 110 volts. Between the two "hot" leads you have 220 volts. Used to be the neutral was the ground. Now, for safety reasons, codes require you not treat the neutral as a ground but provide a second, separate ground for many applications. This usually involves running four wires where at one time three would have sufficed. If you're interested in getting into this stuff, there's a lot available at the public library. Otherwise, find a friend you really trust or hire it done. If you don't know what you're doing, be very careful about whom you trust. The stuff some guys have cobbled up in their own shops and get away with would give you nightmares. Then, when they no longer "get away with it"... you get to see the smoke and hear the sirens outside their shops.

bob g.

Don D. wrote:

Reply to
Robert Galloway

Running a 110 volt, 1 1/2 hp Jet in a new house with modern wiring and then converting it to 220. I found the difference to be worth the effort. Max feed rate ripping 2" oak is better. Push a little and let it catch up is a thing of the past. Trimming small pieces never taxed it at 110 but sometimes you need to do a little more with it and at 220, you can get more out of it.

bob g.

Le>

Reply to
Robert Galloway

Exactly

Reply to
Leon

If you notice, load centers (circuit breaker boxes) have two vertical rows of breakers. The box is pre-wired so that alternating 110 V breakers in each row are connected to different sides of the two 220 hot lines. A 110 breaker connects to just one of the 220 hot lines giving you 110 volts to ground. Notice that a 220 beaker is twice as wide as a 110 breaker because it connects to both sides of the 220 hot lines - notice that the breaker has two places to attach wires - and this gives you 220 between the two wires that you will attach to your breaker.

A 220 line will, for the same current give you approximatey twice the power since power is the product of the voltage and the current (the phase angle between the voltage and the current comes in here but let's not complicate this). Therefore, a power tool requiring a certain power (in watts or kilowatts), will require only half the current draw on 220 V as it would on

110 V. Thus, smaller wire sizes could be used - but usually this is not done. When a power tool begins to bog down on a big load, the voltage drop in the wires between the tool and the load center, is twice as great in the 110 v case as in the 220 v case meaning that you can draw extra power in the 220 case since there is not as much loss in the lines.

If you are building a new shop, put in enough 220 to cover your needs. In the shop I just completed, I have serveral 220 circuits: 1 for the AC/heat pump; 1 for the shop hot water heater; one for the shop air compressor; one

50 amp for a stick welder (with two parallel receptacles); two 20 amp and one 30 amp (again with multiple parallel plugs for convenience since the shop is 1300 ft2) for power tools or MIG welder. I put in 400 amp service to my lot and ran 2, 200 amp subpanels, one to my house and one to my shop.

If you have not put in the foundations as yet, put a Ufer in the foundation instead of using a copper pole in the ground. The building code for most jurisdictions now requires a Ufer for grounding the electrical service in the building. Do a Google seach for Ufer to look at the details, but basically this is a 15 or 20 feet of #4 uninsulated copper wire connected to the steel reinforcing in the foundation. The wire is embedded in the concrete of the foundation with one end emerging and connecting to the ground terminal in the load center. Concrete has a better electrical conductivity that most soil (or dirt) so the UFER is preferred (code mandated in my case) over a copper pole in the soil.

Coordinate the wire size you run from the load center to different lights/receptacles/appliances with the size of the breaker you use. 14 gage is fine for 15 amp 110v lighting circuits (15 amp breakers), 12 gage is usually used for 110v receptacles having max draws of 20 amps (20 amp breakers). Home Depot people can help you with this - in fact all the HD's in my area (Phoenix) have charts above the wire rack showing the relationship.

Code in my area requires that all receptacles be GFI protected. This could be done in one of three ways: 1) a GFI breaker (expensive); 2) a GFI receptacle in every juction box; or 3) a GFI receptacle in the junction box closest to the breaker box in any circuit. I used the third method since it was the least cost. My AC/heatpump required #8 wire and a 40 amp breaker. The hot water heater required #6 wire and a 30 amp breaker. The air compressor that I installed (13scfm@90psi) required a #12 wire with a 20 amp breaker.

Hope this is helpful. Get a qualified electrician to do the power to the load center. From there on is not too bad.

Reply to
dondone

Lighten up on yourself, willya? The mathematical odds are overwhelmingly in your favor that you are not the dumbest dumb-ass to ever wire a workshop... ;>

Don, for your application a book, (and some patience), is pretty much all you're going to need. You're not wiring a chemical plant here, you're running some wiring in your workshop. Good basic books on wiring are good precisely because they give accurate info in a form that people doing some basic electical work can understand and use.

I'd rather do basic electricity than basic plumbing or basic roofing or basic just-about-anything-else-around-the-house. _Everything_ is standardised. For example, wiring and the caps used to finish off a connection are colored the way they are for a reason, so using each wire for the intended purpose, connecting it to the intended point of connection, and properly capping connections _guarantees_ the intended results.

As long as you don't get impatient or "creative" you should get the same results any pro would.

Take your time. Re-read what you think you might not _fully_ understand until the-- excuse the pun-- bulb goes on, and you'll do okay.(*1)

Michael Baglio

(1.) Although I've done a butt-load of home/workshop wiring, I'm a marketing guy, not an electircian. The above is intended as an encouragement, not a wiring installation primer. Any short-circuits, fried connections, blown panel boxes or PVC Dust Collection Explosions are the responsibility of dumb-ass Don and not me. :)

Reply to
Michael Baglio

Thanks for the vote of confidents. I guess I have had other guys show me there drawings in black and white (pencil and any pad available) and I need to see it in color laid out like a plan. I skimmed through the book briefly and it is coming a little clearer. I knew the wires were color coded but I did not know the caps were also. I thought it was grab what ever fit would work. now that I have the books to read me to sleep I can get a better picture. maybe a new part time job. (NOT)

By the way, this newsgroup has given me a lot of good advise. It seems you all are a tighter group that works with each other helping instead of downing the new comer for posting

Thanks again. ALL of you! Don

Reply to
Don D.

Your "different sides of the two 220 hot lines" is likely to cause some confusion, IMO. In your example, it is actually two 110v legs that, with a neutral, supply 110v separately, and 220v only when combined.

Pretty tough code y'all have. Normally only outside, garage, bathroom/kitchen counter circuits require ground fault protection.

Reply to
Swingman

Reply to
dondone

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.