Safety First
May 13th, 2009You Wimps
Everyone is whining about how I’m going to burn the house down with my new air conditioner, so I guess I’ll give in, to placate them. Pansies.
Actually, I realized that converting my 40-amp circuit to a 60-amp circuit would be fairly easy. I’d have to replace the Romex from the box to the garage, and I’d have to replace six feet of conduit, and I’d have to run a few more feet of conduit, and then I could finish the job with a 20-amp breaker and a socket. This would be very safe, and I wouldn’t have to drill any holes through the foot-thick, solid concrete wall. And there would be no issues with power. This circuit would have my 24-amp compressor and a 9-amp air conditioner on it, so even with starting loads taken into account, it would never trip. And I won’t have to use wire nuts, because the line will fork into two #8 branches. I can screw the #6 directly to the poles or whatever they’re called in the disconnect box. I hate wire nuts.
As Og pointed out, a 60-amp breaker for a 9-amp air conditioner may not be the best possible answer. So the additional breaker will be a nice addition. I should get one for my lathe while I’m at it. Can’t hurt.
I wonder what 30 feet of 6-3 Romex costs. Probably seven thousand dollars, since copper seems to be taking forever to respond to the huge drop in metal prices. I wonder what I’ll do with the 8-3 I’m taking out. I already have twenty feet or so that I don’t know what to do with.
I like big wire. I’d rather pay more now that watch the house burn later.
I got a fun Ebay package today. My solid carbide half-inch center-cutting four-flute cutter arrived. I fondled it for quite a while. It’s used, but I could not see any wear on it. I thought these things were supposed to be insanely expensive, but I think I spent fifteen bucks including shipping. I ought to be able to amass a good starter set for under a hundred bucks. And it’s carbide! American-made carbide! Cool!
May 13th, 2009 at 9:16 PM
Everyone is whining about how I’m going to burn the house down with my new air conditioner, so I guess I’ll give in, to placate them. Pansies.
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For some reason, I heard this in King Julian’s voice (the lemur from Madagascar)…with emphesis on the word “Pansies”.
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If you’re a parent with young kids, you understand…
May 13th, 2009 at 10:09 PM
In Canada if you ask for wire nuts in a hardware store they will look at you like you are an idiot, or someone from “the states eh”, which is the same look either way. They call them “muretts” or something just as stupid and french sounding.
May 14th, 2009 at 11:19 AM
I remember when some engineers I worked with were fooling around with triacs and one of them said “what if it shorts out?”. The other one replied that “It’ll just blow the breaker”. Bam! It turns out it went back directly to a 150 amp fuse box. The mechanic who knew it was wired that way just chuckled when he found out.
Later at that same establishment I was working with a 220 volt outlet and I decided to short the neutral line to ground before touching it, just to be on the safe side. BANG!! After my eyes adjusted back to the relative darkness and the sparks were done dancing around on the floor, I noticed that my foot-long flat-blade screwdriver was now a foot-long ice pick. Apparently, when they converted that line to 3 phase, they forgot that outlet was connected to the same circuit. It might have been the same 150 amp fuse box, I’m not sure. So what I thought was a neutral line, may have had 208 volts on it. It’s better to use a meter, even when you’re relatively sure.
–Brad
May 14th, 2009 at 1:32 PM
Replace the wire with the 6-3 but to be safe you should hang a 15 or 20 amp breaker off that for the A/C. That much mismatch from the device (A/C) to the breaker (60A) is not a good idea at all.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:35 PM
Kindly disregard my comment. Maybe I should read and UNDERSTAND the post before I comment on it.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:52 PM
Why? Are you trying to start a revolution in blog commenting?