fyi if you hot conductors are on seperate phases in the panel the voltage on the neutral is balanced out and yes it is legal in the electrical code

 

Thanks for answering that question - it is per code - but I still don't like it. . .(Yeah, I'm picky about such things).
However, the 'voltage' on the neutral better always be equivalent to earth ground (with potentially a small voltage drop at the outlet due to the current and the resistance of the wire). There is nothing to 'balance out'. Neutral = earth ground or something is seriously wrong.

 

T would say the electrician did you a favor. You have the option for a 220 circuit or two 110's. It all depends on how you hook it up in the breaker box.

 

he may have planned on a split circiut for the outlets, in which case what he did is perfectly legal. as in black to the top half and constant hot, and red to the bottom half and switched. if this is the case you WILL have to use a two pole breaker, and NOT two single pole breakers.check the circiut and see if there is a switch box on the wall .just a thought....

 

white is the nuetrol leg bare is the ground wire black is hot and red is hot. yes they do share the same ground and nuetrol but the red should never be on the same phase as the black or the ground and nuetrol wire will be overloaded. if you look inside the breaker panel when the cover is off you will see how the power is transfered into your house. there are two hot feeds. one is 1 phase and the other is the second phase. they are feeding your main breaker which is really two breakers connected together. if either phase tripps the main will trip.
to get 220 volts you have two hot wires at the 220 receptical. one black one red . you als have 1 neutrol which also acts as a ground.
you could have 2 seperat circuits at each receptical if you wanted. say one for the top socket and one for the bottom . all you have to do is break off the tabs.

if you decide to do this makem sure that you dont put the red and the black wire on the same phase. breakers 1,3,5,7,9 and so on are one phase and breaker 2,4,6,8 and so on ar phase two.

 

hey rc
yohe needs two use 2 single pole breakers or he will overload the ground and neutrol wire. a 2 pole breaker shares the same phase where 2 single pole breakers use oposite phases.

 

I wonder if FRED ever got an answer back from his electrician, so he knows what the electrician had in mind in using the loomex (4 wires) instead of 3

 

Something here doesn't sound right at all.

In an A/C cicuit, the common is NOT connected to ground as far as I know - only the GROUND wire goes to the ground circuit.

The standard color code is black and white are the A/C, and green is normally run as the ground identifier. The bare copper is a ground.

The red you should trace back to see if it's connected to anything at all. (END TO END)

Something here smells like SMOKE...

If I remember right, WHITE is PHASE NEUTRAL. This has NOTHING to do with GROUND at all. Whatever you do - don't ground the common (neutral).

I dealt with split phase in a lot of high power systems, that's why I posted this note. The common is a sort of a floating ground used as a return for the A/C phase(s). IT IS NOT ground.

Using one wire as a return for two seperate lines is strictly bad JU-JU. The CURRENT flow is DOUBLE, and the wire should be rated twice what it would normally be if this is done.

 

My did you make me squint Dutch

 

GWolf,

The White gets hooked to the neutral bar along with the ground wires. It is not a ground but they go to the same place.

 

Take a look sometime at the line coming into your house, (if you have overhead). There are 2 black "hot" wires and the white neutral wire is actually just connected to the support cable, which is grounded through the mast, to the box - and then earth ground,(either water pipe or ground rod.) If it's buried there's two hots and one neutral, that is shared by the two hots. Each of those black hot wires is a different phase that is tied to your breakerbox on it's own leg. It gets kind of confusing at times telling which breaker goes to which leg, but they're traceable.

Think of your white neutral as being circuit ground to complete the path and your bare or green ground wire as chassis ground - more like a safety ground. The neutral wire in a sub panel is not hooked to ground in that panel, but isolated there and tied in to ground at the main panel. It's still grounded.

In residential wiring the common conductor used is Romex, which has a black hot, white neutral and bare ground. The white is constant. The black hot wire can vary in color, it just happens they use black in romex and black going to the breakerbox and that's what everyone is used to seeing. If you had EMT conduit running through your house you could pick just about any color you want as hot, as long as it's not white or green. (Industrial will use orange for the 3rd leg of a 3 phase motor and that kind of carries over to the residential and commercial guys - you can use orange, but as kind of last resort.)

Your electrician might have left that wire, so you could wire two separate circuits - sharing the same neutral both your hots, or he might have just had that 3 hot conductor wire left over from another job and gave you the benefit. If you're going to have the three receptacles on the same circuit, I would wire nut and tape the red at both ends for possible future use. I never cut a free conductor - you never know.

 

yes i did not mean to say that white was ground but that it is connected to the ground bar along with the ground wire. so it is really common with ground.

 

howdy im glad to see that you have a complete understanding of this wiring and i agree with you 100% what you say is absolutely the way it is.

 

I once knew a heavy snowfall yanked on the wires so bad the common at the pole was left hanging.

Everytime the furnace strated up the lights would dim so much it wasn't funny.

Called the city electric system & it was restored in an hour.



RE the original post: I am still patiently waiting to hear what the electrician had to say about using the wire he did

 

I agree, it would be nice to hear his side of it. If there was a freezer or something going in down there, it would be nice to have it on it's own circuit. I doubt the inspector will say anything, as long as the red is nutted and taped in a sanitary manner.

I've noticed with inspectors it's a regional thing - beyond the NEC. They know what the local electricians work looks like and it's not always pretty even though it's right. A homeowner will do a job to code and the inspector knows who did it at a glance, because it looks too perfect...