receptacle requirements / electrician questions

[fordsbyjay]

I was building my controller panel tonight and my initial thought was that seems how the CTB16DWHS boards are 20 amps I would need to run 12 guage wire and 20A receptacles when it donned on me that I should be able to use the standard 15A receptacle with 14 guage wire to each plug and use 12 guage only for the power source from the breakers.

The user guide says that each channel can only handle 8 amps so my thinking should be correct.

I just wanted to verify this due to the time and cost involved if I am wrong.

Also, can you run a common neutral to two different channels? I was planning on running a regular receptacle and removing the tab in the middle on the hot side to make it two seperate channels but can I leave the neutral side tab in and run only one neutral or are the neutral lines related to each individual channel?

Super thanks,

Jason

[Greg]

My brother is an electrician this is what he told me. He likes to use 12 as often as possible for two reasons. He says if you upgrade the breaker from a 15 to a 20 later the wire to meet code is already in place. Also he like to "overrate the wire" that way if you only have 15 amps on it it should never be a problem. I was facing the same question when I re-wired my house. The cost was a little more but I have already upgraded at least a dozen outlets with out having to run new wire.



hope this helps

[TomD]

I'm a little confused. Are you talking about the feeds to the controller, or the outputs from each of the 16 channels? If you're talking about the feeds to the LOR units, you will need two - 20 amp circuits. Each CHANNEL has a maximum of 8 amps, but you have 8 channels on each side and can easily reach 20 amps per side. So your feeds to the LOR unit will each have to be 20A circuits with wire and outlets sized to match. And you are correct, 20A outlets are more expensive than 15A, not to mention 12ga. wire.

[johnny christmas]

nuetral can be shared on as many circuits as you want, it all goes back to a common bus bar in the panel so it makes no difference...you can run 20 seperate circuits outside and only have one neutral daisy chaining all the way through with 20 seperate hot legs for a total of 21 wires instead of 40

[fordsbyjay]

I understand that I need 12 guage wire for the 20A service to controller board

My question is pertaining to the outlets wired to each individual channel. If each channel can only handle 8 amps / channel then the standard 15 amp outlet should be sufficient.

[TomD]

You would be correct. a 15A outlet would be sufficient. You also asked about a common neutral. I don't see a big problem with that as long as you size the wire for the amount of current you expect to see. If you plan on using 8 amps on two channels together, then you would need 12 ga. wire for that neutral. I'm not sure about the connections on the board, however. They may not be able to handle that kind of current in a common neutral situation. That's more of a question for LOR.

[fordsbyjay]

I am just going to wire it like normal to prevent any problems that may arise.

That is an interesting point about the increased size of the neutral wire. When I built my garage I used a common neutral with two different hots so that each side of the 4 gang outlet would be on separate breakers and no one mentioned the need for a larger neutral wire including the inspector. He performed a rather in depth inspection due to the fact it was on a home owners permit and asked a lot of questions to see if I knew what I was doing.

I tend to overwire things compared to what electricians think is necessary but having always owned older homes I look at it from a service standpoint. Electricians built it then haul ass leaving you to hire another electrician later on or fix it yourself. A perfect example would be putting every outlet in your kitchen on one breaker (usually tied in with half the living room). Then you have all these stupid requirements like you can't use the microwave while using the electric grill. My other pet peeve is how they wire all the bedrooms to one circuit then when you need to change/service something you have to turn off power to half the house leaving you working in the dark. I always wire my receptacles on a separate circuit from the lights for this exact reason. I also noticed down south they use a lot of plastic boxes instead of metal. I have had to fix a bunch of those too since I moved here. They don't like heavy loads like fans and big lights.



Anyways Tom, thanks for the info and sorry for rambling on.

Jason

[Guest wbottomley]

johnny christmas wrote:

nuetral can be shared on as many circuits as you want, it all goes back to a common bus bar in the panel so it makes no difference...you can run 20 seperate circuits outside and only have one neutral daisy chaining all the way through with 20 seperate hot legs for a total of 21 wires instead of 40

It all goes back to a common bus bar... yes. But when you break out circuits on single phase 240, you need "one" neutral per two hots. Those two hots have to be on opposite phases. The neutral wire carries the difference between each phase. So in the case above, you have 20 hot wires, you should have 10 neutrals.

Back in the day, I was an commercial electrical installing 3000 amp switch gear. Mostly worked with 3-phase 480/277 and 208/120.

[Donald Puryear]

Mountainwxman wrote:

johnny christmas wrote:

nuetral can be shared on as many circuits as you want, it all goes back to a common bus bar in the panel so it makes no difference...you can run 20 seperate circuits outside and only have one neutral daisy chaining all the way through with 20 seperate hot legs for a total of 21 wires instead of 40

It all goes back to a common bus bar... yes. But when you break out circuits on single phase 240, you need "one" neutral per two hots. Those two hots have to be on opposite phases. The neutral wire carries the difference between each phase. So in the case above, you have 20 hot wires, you should have 10 neutrals.

Back in the day, I was an commercial electrical installing 3000 amp switch gear. Mostly worked with 3-phase 480/277 and 208/120.

As a electrician myself Its nice to see people doing things right. (safe). You could share the neutral among several output circuits as long as you do not exceed 20 amps( #12 wire) per bank. After all thats what happens at the controller.

[fordsbyjay]

I am just about done so hopefully tomorrow I can post a picture of my panel. I am more worried about the programming than anything because I know it is the hardest. I look at these videos on youtube and I shudder at the amount of time and effort put forward to make that all happen at a certain pace. I did some programming in college and know how much work it is trouble shooting software etc.

[fordsbyjay]

Here is what I have done so far.


I wanted to make a panel that I could move out to the side of the house then put away in the off season. I still have to make a top and then I will make a door to cover the front and run the cords underneath it. We get a lot of rain in the winter so I need to get it up off of the ground but my wheel cart is too unstable right now. The wheels need to be moved out some more.




The main power will come in the rear and it feeds through inside the box.