Donny M. Carter Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 EACH SIDE OF MY CONTROLLER WILL BE PLUGGED INTO ONE SIDE, WITCH IS ON A 20AMP CIRCUIT.I JUST BUILT MY HOUSE AND ORGANIZED MY ELECTRICAL JUST FOR LIGHTORAMA CONTROLLERS.BOX IS 13x13 (HOME DEPOT)8 OUTSIDE COVERS8 STANDARD RECP.12GAUGE WIRESILICONE (FOR WEATHER PROOF)I SPLIT EACH SIDE OF THE RECP BY CUTTING THE TAB BETWEEN THE HOT SIDE. I ALSO SAVED WIRE BY RUNNING A COMMON NEUTRAL AND A COMMON GROUND. I THEN SAVED SPACE BY USING SLIM-LINE GFI BREAKERS. BREAKERS WHERE CHEAPER THEN GFI RECP, PLUS THE PRICE OF GFI COVERS. Attached files Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dad02 Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 Hope your breakers are GFI cause once all those controllers are plugged in those weather proof covers will not do much good. Is this mounted under an eve? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donny M. Carter Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 THEY ARE GFI. SINCE THE PIC WAS TAKEN I INSTALLED THE ROOF/CANOPY I MADE FOR IT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Cockroft Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 Donny M. Carter wrote: THEY ARE GFI. SINCE THE PIC WAS TAKEN I INSTALLED THE ROOF/CANOPY I MADE FOR IT.I think you are going to have a problem with the shared neutrals and GFI breakers. The shared ground will be ok. Both grounds and neutrals need to be upsized if you are sharing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donny M. Carter Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 THE BREAKERS ARE GFI. THE ONLY THING SHARING A NEUTRAL AND GROUND IS THE RECP.THE BREAKERS ALL HAVE THEIR OWN NEUTRAL AND GROUND..THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP ON THE UP-SIZED WIRE. I WILL CHECK THAT OUT.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lleibeck Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 George,Just so i have it right,if I use the mini's I should be good.I plan to buy some minis from LED-Holiday-Lighting during their preseason sale for use on a 10 foot tree.Sounds like I should replace my C9 and C5's also. I assume if i feel they are too bright I can set the intensity down?????Also, I plan to build the snubbers Chuckd told about in his PC thread.http://forums.planetchristmas.com/showthread.php?t=37562GREAT thread explaining the how and why of snubbers without requiring an EE degree.Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve synek Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 Donny M. Carter wrote: EACH SIDE OF MY CONTROLLER WILL BE PLUGGED INTO ONE SIDE, WITCH IS ON A 20AMP CIRCUIT.I JUST BUILT MY HOUSE AND ORGANIZED MY ELECTRICAL JUST FOR LIGHTORAMA CONTROLLERS.BOX IS 13x13 (HOME DEPOT)8 OUTSIDE COVERS8 STANDARD RECP.12GAUGE WIRESILICONE (FOR WEATHER PROOF)I SPLIT EACH SIDE OF THE RECP BY CUTTING THE TAB BETWEEN THE HOT SIDE. I ALSO SAVED WIRE BY RUNNING A COMMON NEUTRAL AND A COMMON GROUND. I THEN SAVED SPACE BY USING SLIM-LINE GFI BREAKERS. BREAKERS WHERE CHEAPER THEN GFI RECP, PLUS THE PRICE OF GFI COVERS.DonnyNot to beat you up, but was this inspected. Between the pictures and descriptions, this is not right per the National Electrical Code. And I am not talking about the weather proof covers. How many breakers feed all these outlets? How many wires will be in the conduit? Have you done any testing of these outlets yet? Maybe I am not seeing this correctly- or are these outlets controlled by a controller?Inspector Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Simmons Posted February 21, 2010 Share Posted February 21, 2010 Lee,I think you'll find the LED minis most satisfactory. And I agree that Chuck's snubber idea is the best I've seen and I'm looking forward to adding them this year to smooth out a couple rough spots I had in '09. But before you go snubber crazy though, I'd wait to see exactly where you need them. I have a lot of channels that have only one set of LED's (mostly 35 or 50 ct sets) and those don't seem to be a problem. It's the channels that have more than one set of lights where you start having issues, and the more lights on the channel, the more noticeable the problems with fades. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cray Augsburg Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 The common wire is daisy-chained from receptacle to receptacle. You are asking that side of the system to take all the current you draw from each receptacle interconnected in such a way. eg: if you have four receptacles daisy-chained as in your picture, and you draw 10 Amps from each receptacle, the wire connecting to the first receptacle in the line will be asked to carry 40 Amps. The bottom line is that there should be a "white" wire for every "black" wire you intend to connect -- if you drive one receptacle with each breaker, each receptacle should have its very own common wire (in addition to a black wire) from the breaker.Yes, I know you can have more than one duplex outlet on a circuit in house wiring. I just think it's safer (and, I believe, required by code) to have both wires.Of course, I could be entirely wrong (in which case, as Emily Latella might say, "never mind".) Perhaps you plan to drive the four connected outlets with one breaker.Hope this helps.Cray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan C Posted February 23, 2010 Share Posted February 23, 2010 Donny M. Carter wrote: THE BREAKERS ARE GFI. THE ONLY THING SHARING A NEUTRAL AND GROUND IS THE RECP.THE BREAKERS ALL HAVE THEIR OWN NEUTRAL AND GROUND..If your GFI breakers are working correctly, then this arrangement will not work. You must connect a Live (Hot) and a Neutral from each GFI breaker to the sockets it will serve. If you common the Neutrals (as you appear to have done from your photos), then as soon as you attempt to use a load from one of your outlets, its GFI will trip.Regards,Alan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donny M. Carter Posted February 23, 2010 Share Posted February 23, 2010 YES IT WAS INCORRECT, I HAVE FIXED THE NEUTRAL WIRE. NOW EACH RECP HAS ITS OWN NEUTRAL. THANKS FOR ALL THE COMMENTS AND ADVICE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lester Stone Posted February 28, 2010 Share Posted February 28, 2010 Ok. Newbie ie (lor virgin) here, What is a snubber? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-klb- Posted February 28, 2010 Share Posted February 28, 2010 The correct definition of a snubber is a filter (typically R-C) to prevent triacs from switching back on from a high dv/dt surge, typically from switching off an inductive load.To the LOR community, it is nothing more than some pure resistive load added to a channel driving LEDs. It both adds some current all the way down to zero crossing, to keep loads above the hold on current closer until closer to zero crossing, and with large numbers of strings, it can help drain the capacitance from all the wiring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ErnieHorning Posted March 1, 2010 Share Posted March 1, 2010 Lester Stone wrote: What is a snubber?In newbie words, in this case it’s nothing more that a resistor that’s added to the end of an LED string so that it will dim and turn on/off correctly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lleibeck Posted March 4, 2010 Share Posted March 4, 2010 Lester,Check out the link I referenced above if you missed it.http://forums.planetchristmas.com/showthread.php?t=37562 Great info in this thread, even has some science that you don't need to be an EE to understand.Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lleibeck Posted August 17, 2010 Share Posted August 17, 2010 Update, My order from LED-Holiday-Lighting arrived today. Order was complete. Have spot checked a few strings and they work fine. Plan to test all, don't want any surprises in November.George, your right, these are bright enough, they look great.Pretty sure I will need to use snubbers. I just tried one string using a dimmer and they do not go out unless the snubber is installed.Hey at least I planned for this and built 100 snubbers a couple months ago.L Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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