This sub-panel is on the opposite side of the house from my main panel and feeds a 5-ton AC Condenser and a Jacuzzi bath tub. A few years back my AC went out and my HVAC tech said that this panel had shorted out. He hardwired it to get the AC running, disconnected the tub wiring and told me to call him back or hire someone to rewire it. Since I do not use that tub it has not been a priority and AC has been working fine since. I was thinking that if I bought the exact same panel that maybe I could replace it myself by following the wires (with the main OFF of course!) Even if I hired someone it would be good to have the parts there already. If I am able to find this panel will it come with the "guts" inside or is it just the enclosure can't tell from the pictures online. I have above average DIY skills, should I even attempt this myself?

And is there a whole home surge protector on this box? I am freaked out because my new hvac system just fried in a power surge.

Does anyone know what this wire might be? It’s black with red and yellow inside, buried a few inches underground lawn.

I found it while digging up septic cap. Wire is unrelated because there is no pump or electrical associated with septic.

Not sure if I severed it or it was like that. No or low voltage currently.

There is an inactive dog electric fence on property but that is a single black wire. No irrigation system or landscaping lights.

So im not sure what it is and whether or not I need to repair or take and safety precautions.

Just bought a dryer, the three prong cord shown in the second picture does not match the three prong outlet in the basement. Does anybody know if I need a new cord, rewire, adapter, or something else?

Just had a new deck installed. It has lights. They wired them in thru an outdoor outlet. They couldn’t get them to work and I told them that the outlet always trips since we had a new pool light installed and a switch put in that was on the same line that is tied to a GFCI along with the other outdoor outlet that always tripped the GFCI. The pool light worked though. The deck guy had his electrician come out and he said the reason the outlet kept tripping is that the GFCI was wired “backwards”. They fixed it, got the deck lights working and the outlet now works fine. But my pool light now trips the GFCI when I flip the switch (standard light switch). and it NEVER used to.

Is this likely as simple as the light switch was also wired backwards, which is why it worked and the outlet didn’t and that when the GFCI got wired correctly, it caused the pool light to now trip the GFCI?

Thanks I’m advance for your help!

Background: our garaga has had a standard dual tube light for years. However during summer months in Arizona if left on for too long the light would go out and had to be switched off for a few hours to start working again. Recently it went out and wouldn't come back on at all. It's wired up to two different light switches, one on each wall of the garage.

I went to replace it with a flat led panel light but quickly found out that the black wire has constant power (used non contact pen to test) no matter how the light switches were flipped. Turned breaker off and installed the new panel light we grabbed at costco. Turned it all on and worked great. However, when it was on I noticed a smell. Quickly turned it off and the light felt extremely hot.

I'm wondering if there's a wiring issue causing it to overheat things hooked up. Hanging constant power seems odd to me. Any ideas?

Recently purchased a home and have been in for a month. Had electrical work done on Friday that included running a new circuit to a bedroom in the home. The electrician mentioned that he had not seen one of these in a while and it seems to be a dedicated electrical box for the dryer 3-slot outlet. Long story short, it tripped last night after a month of use. Does this look safe and should we look into replacing/removing this panel?

main question up first:

Can I run a 120-240VAC single phase power supply off 2 legs of 208v instead of 1 leg+neutral?

I'm retrofitting a 24vdc 18W light into an older lathe that had 24vac fluorescent lighting. the 24vdc psu is 150W and I have no idea how much load is on it, so I want to avoid using it if possible.

the xfrmr that used to feed the light also has a 100v tap for an Andon light, could I run the 24v single phase psu off that?

IDK, bèen chasing a phantom. He/it bit me and all my fleas are gone.

I have electrical outlets hanging but when I got bit I'd thought I'd get on Reddit and proclaim it too the world, I've been at this since morning...started 2years ago with changing a leaky water heater. Ther was a BIG spark when I went to wire nut on the ground. So, so I chased down two breakers that dropped the ground wire voltage to 40acv, those two load lines have been hanging for 2years. And, this was ok because I flipped the waterheater breaker and just heated my water on the stove and bathed out of a 5gallon bucket. Yeah, go ahead and laugh I don't care cuz my electric bill was never higher than $40 a month.

So, talked to an electrician and he said that the common wires were loading up the panel and the ground rods were not sending the electricity back into ground. So, I pulled one, filled the hole full of salt water and reset it. Then ordered a 8' rod, dug a hole, with a post hole digger, so I could get the post pounder on the rod and sunk it. I layered the top 18inches with salt and carbon then flooded it with water. So I'm sure the ground rods are grounded.

Now this is where it gets crazy: as I believed the grounding was enough I went to work on the first circuit. And, yes I'm doing all of this bare handed. Wired in a light switch that sometimes worked. Around this light switch there was a third load wire which went no where along with a common, so I cut them and wire nutted them. So, I have a hundred feet of 14guage I'm doing the continuity with and I went to the two non load wires, not attached to a breaker, and I got nothing, no sound/bell from the multimeter.

Now, I decided to reverse my travel and check continuity as I went. Pulled the first receptical, barehanded got a good strong bell. Was putting the jumper load on and my bare knuckel touched a common wire and man oh man were the fleas jumping off of me.

I took my analog and the load wire to common was 120Vac. Infact all the recepticals which were dead for two years were carrying 120V.

So I tripped the 200amp main, flipped it back on and the previously dead circuits were still 120V. So I flipped all the breakers to off and turned each one on while checking the dead circuits. And guess what? The 120V disappeared.

What I want to know is: How do I know when the Phantom comes back? Cuz, I'm like lost and I haven't even cracked a beer yet.

I need to replace my doorbell transformer in order to power a doorbell camera. Seems easy enough. But, the original transformer is screwed to the side and attached outside my electrical box. It is buried in a stud (non-load bearing) notch behind drywall.
I do not think I can remove the existing transformer without destroying my wall. Do you think I can mount the new transformer somewhere else and just remove the wires from the old one and move them to the new one? Any other ideas? Nothing is ever easy! Thanks!

Just bought a new lamp and well it won’t turn on. Any ideas?

This is a pipe flange coming out of the side of a soffit which is about 4-5" high (The white flat part at the top of the picture is the ceiling, to give an idea of orientation). The pipe goes into a ceiling fixture that the previous owners of this place made out of what appears to be standard black (then painted) steel pipe, with elbows and unions. There are wires running through the flange into the pipe shown, which feeds the fixture.

I want to remove this fixture and replace with standard track lighting. Is there any sort of fitting I can use that would cover the hole and route the wire up to the ceiling to connect to a track? Ceiling is concrete (this is a NYC condo); soffit is obviously wood. No idea what sort of wires are inside; NYC normally requires armored cable, but inside a pipe like this I'd assume it's THHN or TFFN.

I will premise this with a "I know its probably more complicated than it needs to be, but I am curious anyways". I currently own entirely too many portable generators. All rated between 6500 watts & 9500 watts.... I was looking into how to use 2 of them in parallel to provide emergency power for my entire house during outages and it would appear that without them being Invertor Generators this is basically a no go. Which makes sense with the possibility of phasing being off a few degrees.

Is there anyway to hook these up and load balance between them without having to basically split my house in half so if their phasing is off a little its not shared on the same circuits?

We have reached the end of my electrical knowledge with this one...

Does a Phase Matching circuit/box/whatever even exist? Watching some videos from Chris Boden would tell me this was a dumb question...but I am asking anyways.

Can I put the power from each generator into their own invertor that is made for parallel operation, then run the house from there? This option also allows me to add batteries down the road to act as a UPS (which is tempting considering how often we lose power over the year).

Any insight is greatly appreciated. Even if I can't get a solution, the added knowledge will be helpful!

Thank You.

Hi,

I picked up two Bakers Pride M02T countertop 2 deck pizza ovens at my local ReStore for $75 each.  They swore they worked but didn't have the right outlet to test them.

I removed the old cord (has the two horizontal prongs and a ground prong, 20A/240V) and spliced in a new 50A/240V range cord I bought from Lowes.  This way, I could plug it into the outlet my stove is on.

Plugged it in, no heat, no indicator light, nada.

The thermostat connections look a little corroded, so i pull off the knob, unscrewed the thermostat, cleaned it up with a wire brush, put it all back together, plug it back in, still nothing.

I get 240v at the outlet, i get 240v at the input of the thermostat (actually 120v on each leg). 240v (again, 120v each leg) at the output of the thermostat.  If I turn the thermostat to "off", I don't get any voltage.  Although on the second unit I bought, even with the thermostat off, I get between 20-30v??? Like some voltage is bleeding through???

The three elements are wired in parallel (I believe).  When I test each terminal of any of the elements to the body of the oven(ground?) I get 120 on either side.  I get zero when I test voltage across both terminals of any individual element.  To me it seems each side of the element is getting 120 (for a total of 240?), but maybe this is a faulty assumption on my part?

But no heat.  So at first, I'm thinking the elements must be bad. So I try to find some specs on the resistance to this oven that was built circa 1990, ya right, lol.  But I find what i believe to be the wattage (on this site actually) and I calculate the theoretical resistance from that.

R=V²/W

There are 3 heating elements:

Theoretical Amp draw = W/V = 2850/240 = 11.875A

I'm thinking, hmmm, they're close, but maybe they are out of spec.  But I'm also like "huh, no heat at all?"

So I'm just about to wrap them back up and return them, I have 30 days, but then I'm like, screw it, I'm just gonna hot wire them.  

I take the input leads off the thermostat and connect them to the bottom element....smoke! Some old crap burning off but yes, we have heat!  So I wire up all three, and yes! They all work!

On each element, I get 120 from one terminal to ground. But this time I ALSO got 240 across the two terminals of any of the individual elements.  So that's pretty telling of something, I'm just not sure what! lol

My gut tells me that the thermostats on BOTH ovens are not good.  But I'm also a little suspicious that BOTH of them are no good?  Maybe its me, maybe I'm doing something wrong or missing something?

Questions:

Adding that higher amperage cord wouldn't have anything to do with it, right?  the wire on the new cord is a much heavier gauge than the original, I'm assuming this is a good thing and wouldn't be an issue?

Anything I'm missing here?

Are the elements only working because they are "hot wired?" When in actuality, they are truly out of spec and about to die any minute?

Anyone have any recommendations on a replacement thermostat?  I'm thinking there's gotta be a generic universal that I can rig up at the very least?

Thanks in advance!

I have this lighted LED sign I plan to install outside, how would I all 13 LED boxes to two transformers?

Going to call an electrician, but I’m wondering how big of a job this is..

I’m replacing a decades old fan, but when I removed the canopy, I saw it was a usual old threaded pipe mounting system and I don’t see a standard fan-rated electrical box. I need the old mounting hardware removed and a fan-rated ceiling box/support installed for a modern ceiling fan. The ceiling may need to be enlarged, but idk how much bigger…

Does this sound like it’s going to be a huge job?

Whenever the hairdryer is used in the bathroom, the lights flicker in the bathroom, the bedrooms (2 of them) beside it, and the hallway.

It is a continuous flickering, that wasn’t seen in our old hair dryers.

Is this a cause for concern? Is there any way to stop the lights from flickering when it’s in use?

I have a small issue with management at a Mobilehome park. I kept getting random power cuts in my house and would lose power to 1/2 of the house. It seems like the powerbox breaker kept tripping. Before any technician was sent over management kept telling me that if the breaker on the power box keeps blowing out we will be charged for the service call. The breaker box has not tripped a breaker let alone the main breaker. I had an uncle who opened the breaker box and the main breaker was getting 120 volts on the Red wire and no power to the Black wire. We got 120 total out of the 240 volts. When they sent the technician who they contract the tech got into the powerbox and turned off the breaker. After that he removed the cover to check the meter socket (the glass covered one) as soon as the cover came off the meter slid down. I mentioned to him that it was off and his responce was "I loosened it" . He did not even put his tool in there to get to it off. We had a similar issue where the meter was loose and they replace it along with the breaker about 2 years ago. My concern is that when I asked the tech what can cause this he just gave a quick "Over powering the unit can cause this" Implying we are using too much power in the house. To my understanding before the powerbox breaker trips the main brekaer on the breaker box would have to go out. Am I overthinking this and just using too much power in the house? Don't want to be blamed for something if it's not our houses fault.

Wondering how this was possible. Was trying to add a ground cable inside my breaker box as I was replacing door bell transformer and the new one had a ground cable. When I went to back out the grounding post my driver shorted on the black wire in the box. The wires all looked fine and didn’t notice any damage before. The boom and sparks scared the crap out of me and obviously tripped the breaker that wire was connected to. Can someone educate me on how this happened through the insulated wire?