Hello. I'm sure this has been posted about in here before, but I don't know how to find it. So I'll ask again.
I am running a 220 line for my new (used) tablesaw. What does the ground attach to in the breaker box? Does it go to the neutral bus bar, or elsewhere?
Thanks,
Alex
It goes to the ground bus bar with all the other grounds.
Chris
[I am not a licensed electrician. Always follow local code and ordinances.]
Ground (green/bare) always goes to ground. Always. Your main breaker box may be the ground/neutral strapping point, though, in which case both bus bars are connected together and it shouldn't matter which you use (unless the existing wires are segregated, in which case, use the same as as the other ground wires).
A 120v circuit uses one line to the breaker (black) and one line to neutral (white), in addition to ground.
A 240v circuit has two options:
Table saws almost laways use #1.
Color summary:
Green/bare - ground.
White - neutral.
Black - hot (breaker or dual breaker).
Red - hot #2 (dual breaker).
Now, within the tool the colors may not be so obvious (they should be, but they may not be). However, one wire should be physically connected to the metal chassis or the metal case of the motor. This wire is ground.
Any plugs/outlets you may install should have information on them about which wires go where, but usually there's one screw that's greenish (ground), one that's silverish (white, neutral) and one that's bronze (black, hot). 240v outlets will have two bronze screws, and may label them "L1" and "L2". No, it doesn't matter which hot is which.
Other tidbits... In polarized outlets, the wider prong is neutral. Outlets should be installed with ground "up" so if the plug is loose, anything falling in there will hit ground first. All metal boxes and conduits must be connected to ground, but should not be used *as* ground. Wires should be attached to 2x4 wall studs at the center, to avoid getting damaged by sheetrock screws.
If you're using three conductors plus ground, red and black go to the breaker, white goes to the neutral bus bar, green/bare goes to the ground bus bar.
If you're using two conductors plus ground then black and white (mark the white conductor red at both ends with paint, tape, or heat shrink--I forget what marking method code calls for) go to the breaker and green/bare goes to the ground bus bar.
DJ Delorie wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@delorie.com:
*snip*
So that's why they switched positions! I got used to the "face" and was wondering why the new outlets were positioned "upside down." Is this a NEC requirement, or just something for extra safety?
Puckdropper
">> I am running a 220 line for my new (used) tablesaw.
Thank you everybody for your helpful responses. Now, it's time to grab the tool belt and go down to the basement...
Alex
Not required by code, but it is becoming an accepted practice.
Code doesn't specify the marking method -- just that it must be permanent, and encircle the conductor.
After turning the breakers off, right?
mac
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For some applications there are indeed 2 grounds, a neutral ground and a machine ground. There is some reason the phase may be out if not wired correctly (no im not an electrician) It is the difference between 3 and 4 wire 220. Same voltage with different configuration...
Do yourself a favor, check with a professional or your local township for codes...110 can kill you, but 220 likely WILL kill you if wired wrong...
Yep.. I hit this last year when we were running off of a generator..
The contractors generator didn't work very well... water pump and water heater would not both run without blowing the breaker on the gen., so we ran one at a time.. When we bought our own gen., I noticed that it had a 4 prong outlet, where the contractor's had 3... They has wires going to each hot and what I "assumed" was ground.. This was before we had electricity, obviously, and the 2 hot wires ran to lugs in the box above where the meter would be and the ground ran to one of 2 pieces of re-bar in the ground in front of the meter "kiosk"..
We ran the 2 hots as they did, the ground to the same place they used and the neutral to the other grounding rod.. Everything worked well and my son & I were busy congratulating ourselves when my wife mentioned that the breaker panel (in the kitchen pantry) was "buzzing"... Found out it wasn't buzzing, just ARCING... oops... Shut everything down, reversed the ground and neutral and fired up the generator...Everything worked great for the next couple of months, until we got "real" electricity...
mac
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Something about this doesn't sound right mac. Both of those rods should have been electrically the same, so it won't matter which wire you run to which rod.
Annoys the piss out of me. It just looks wrong. And the "reasoning" (loose plug/falling object) ranks right up there with dust collection system explosions. I've yet to see or hear any actual documented example of that happening anywhere.
Things you will never see in my house: Al Sharpton, Bill O'Reilly, upside down receptacles, Al Sharpton (not redundant).
That got me, also.. I looked at my neighbor's kiosk and it only has one rod in the ground... Someone told me that it depended on where the ground wires went.. on the bar or on the box, or something like that.. I'm pretty comfortable working with 110v but 220v is a now thing for me..
OH.. sort of a side thing, but might be relevant: The house is built of insulating block and has no studs to screw the circuit breaker panel into, so until the did the stucco work, the panel was held in place with bailing wire twisted around a metal vent pipe and run through the screw holes in the breaker box.. These wire were RED hot and arcing.. When we reversed the ground and neutral wires, they were fine..
Bottom line was that I should have had someone qualified hook up the generator up but didn't really believe the bozo that the contractor sent out was an "electrician"
mac
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Help me out here mac - what is this that you refer to as a kiosk?
Since your ground and your neutral are tied together in the box, it should not matter. You can run a generator without a ground (separate ground rod near the generator) all day long with no problems. It's done every day all across America. That means you're only running the two hot legs and the neutral back to the panel. You look just like the public utility at this point. Tie the ground and the neutral together as you did by clamping to earth ground, and tie the panel to earth ground and you've effectively done the same thing. That of course, assumes that both of those ground rods were indeed making good earth contact. Just being driven into the ground 8' does not assure good earth ground. As odd as that sounds, when I was in the Air Force they used to inspect our earth grounds every few months. Sometimes the ground would read a high resistance and they'd pour water there to see if that fixed it. Then of course, they'd schedule a follow up inspection to make sure that the ground was indeed good. At home, nobody measures their earth ground. We just sink rods and move on.
It's hard to guess in retrospect, what was wrong, but this really sounds more like a fundamental wiring mistake - either in your cable or how you hit the panel. Somehow you put a leg of voltage on the panel box. I'll just about guarantee there was a wiring error in there somewhere.
Sorry.. We're in a new development in Mexico and each house has a 4 foot high stucco box in front of it for the electrical service.. My wife says it's a kiosk, which I'm probably spelling wrong and thought it was a small display in a shopping mall.. ;-]
Might be what they did on or neighbors house... he has one rod, we have 2..
Very possible... Working with Mexican contractors is a real test of patience and endurance.. Our blueprints show 3 breakers in the kitchen, in reality there's ONE.. for everything, including the refrigerator.. We called him on it and he offered to tear up the wall (insulated cement block) and rewire, but after several fixes of this type we just told him to forget it.. They had to cut walls for the missing wires for the satellite tv, then for the phone and then for a trap they didn't put in for the laundry... that was enough wall work.. Oh.. and the water leak that flooded our courtyard every time the water pump ran was fun, too.. They had to do another roof-to-foundation cut to replace poorly glued joints on that one... *sigh*
mac
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You're a man of admirable patience mac.
You have to be down here, Mike, or you'll end up in the rubber room...
We figure that's we're guests in their country and go with the flow.. but it's ain't always easy.. You learn after a while that the only stress down here is what you bring on yourself... the job will be done when it's done and they don't worry about deadlines and such.. just not in the culture..
I met a guy last night who's house was "contracted" to be finished 18 months ago, and they just put windows and doors in... You don't dare piss off a contractor, because the all have way more work than they can handle and they'll just wander off to the next job..
mac
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snip
Hi All, Not exactly on topic, but I had to share this.
In 2005, I bought my home in a city closer to work and everything I do. It was a fixer-upper, but what better for a weekend woodworking warrior?
The day after I moved in, a new neighbor walked over, introduced himself and let me know I should be really careful with the electricity in the garage. "The guy that moved-out thought he knew everything, but wasn't real good with electricity and he just finished re-wiring the garage. He couldn't turn the garage electricity on, a breaker would always 'POP' ".
The fact that the romex in the garage was draped over 10d cut masonry nails gave me my 1st clue. I also noticed four - individual #4 wires (all the same color, no color code added) in the main service panel. I wondered what appliance he had planned for the garage.
OK, let's see; Four wires for the 220 service,
1 each for the 2 -110's 1 Neutral 1 Safety GroundLooks good, EXCEPT 2 of the wires went to 20 amp breakers and 1 to a 15 amp breaker. He attached the Neutral to a breaker!
The kitchen was even more fun, but that's for another time.
Be Safe,
Dave
Been there, done that...
When converting my garage in the States to a "SHOP", I needed more 110v outlets, and wasn't using the 220v for the dryer plug.. With the helpful advise of a neighbor, I ran the extra ground wire and converted the 220 into two 110v circuits, each having it's own junction box and all.. Ran 12 gauge three-wire romex (with romex staples) all around the garage to where needed... the 220v at the breaker panel had a breaker for each leg, so I was all set.. What they DIDN'T tell me was to replace the two 40 amp breakers with 15 or 20 amp... We were very lucky... about 2 months later we had a small fire in one outlet box and we were in the shop at the time, so it was easy to put the fire out... However, I had to send my wife to the breaker box to TURN OFF the 40 amp breaker... I learned later that 12 gauge wire will melt before a 40 amp breaker will pop..
What I should have done was have an electrician do it, but since I did it myself, I should have replaced the 40 amp breakers with 20 amp AND used breaker boxes on each shop circuit instead of junction boxes..... and put 15 amp breakers in each of the "sub panels"..
mac
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