We are setting up a workshop area here in a basement and there is an old 18 inch bandsaw and an old table saw and both of those require 240 Volts so we want to put an electrical socket for that here and I need to run a wire to that from the breaker panel, which is at the back of the home. The first thing we’re doing is to run a wire from the breaker panel to where I want the socket. It’s quite a bit of work snaking all that wire through all the joists. We should have started in the middle and worked towards both ends. We are using a number 10 Romex wire with an orange sheath. This type of wire is normally used for 240 Volt heater circuits and the main difference is that it has a black and a red conductor instead of a black and a white conductor.
A black wire is always used for hot and white always indicates neutral. Red can be something else such as another hot. In this case both black and red are hot because they’re at alternate phases of a 240 Volt circuit. We’ve glued to 2 by 4’s together to form an L to fit around a post. And that gives me a place to mount the socket to, and also helps to protect the wire.
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You can cut machine screw threads in wood, but you can also use wood screws on metal. We are going to be drilling a 1/8th inch pilot hole through the metal post. And drywall screws are just a tiny bit larger than that and also much harder than the post so the drywall screw will screw in and hold itself quite nicely in that metal hole. Now one thing that gets people confused is where to get the 240 Volts from because, if I measure from ground to here where the breakers connect, it’s 123 Volts. And on here as well, but these two bars are always opposed to each other so that between the two of them, we actually get that 240 Volts.
So, here’s the 240 Volt breaker, and that connects to two of those bars there so between the two of them it gets to 240 Volts. By the way, it’s important to turn off the mains when you put one of these breakers in its best to put it in the off position, because you’re likely to touch the screws while you plug it in.
We have worked on the life breaker panel before, which means if I touch the bar part here, and I touch ground at the same time, I could get zapped. So, we have to be careful not to touch this and this at the same time. One reason why we work on a live breaker panel? Well if I turned off all the electricity it would be dark in here, and that would make hard to see. After creating the installation of this type of circuit, we added eight more 120 Volt sockets, and those are actually off of one three conductor wire using opposite phases the red one and the black one are the opposite phases and they share a neutral and that way I get twice as much juice that I can get out of here. And the neutral actually never gets overloaded even though it’s shared because those two phases are opposite. So, if they’re both loaded, the load on the neutral is actually canceled. The main reason for having a few machines and the tools area in the basement is really handy because it means the person doesn’t have to walk all the way over to the shop every time, they want to cut something.
For the time being they have a rat’s nest of extension cords and lamps up there which no doubt the safety Nellie’s, will say “Oh, that’s unsafe.” “It’s overloading bla bla bla.” But these are actually all LED bulbs, about eight watts a piece, so all those lights together actually use up to less power than one conventional 100-watt bulb. And hopefully we’ll get this area set up enough that I can do simple projects down here.
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