Please suffer a fairly green question.

I'm planning a house and I'd like to have a welder outlet in both the
basement and the garage. I'm clear about the wire size, type, breaker
etc to use. My question has to do with routing the wire.

95% of the house is concrete, and wiring is in conduit (IMT).

My breaker box is in the basement. Conduit coming out the side of the
breaker box carries conductors that serve the basement. Conduit
comming out of the top of the breaker box carries conductors serving
the garage. If want both welder outlets on one circuit, how do I
route the wires? (PS. I have only one welder, one plugged in at a
time.)

I could run the circuit from the breaker in the breaker box thru the
side conduit to the basement welder outlet, then and back track,
re-entering the breaker box and out the top conduit to the garage
welder outlet. But is this legal?

Can someone give me the NEC reference?

--wahzoo

wahzoo wrote:
Please suffer a fairly green question.

I'm planning a house and I'd like to have a welder outlet in both the
basement and the garage. I'm clear about the wire size, type, breaker
etc to use. My question has to do with routing the wire.

95% of the house is concrete, and wiring is in conduit (IMT).

My breaker box is in the basement. Conduit coming out the side of the
breaker box carries conductors that serve the basement. Conduit
comming out of the top of the breaker box carries conductors serving
the garage. If want both welder outlets on one circuit, how do I
route the wires? (PS. I have only one welder, one plugged in at a
time.)

I could run the circuit from the breaker in the breaker box thru the
side conduit to the basement welder outlet, then and back track,
re-entering the breaker box and out the top conduit to the garage
welder outlet. But is this legal?

Can someone give me the NEC reference?

--wahzoo


How about tapping the conductors in the breaker box and running just one
set of conductors to each outlet? Put a pigtail of the appropraite
sized wire on each terminal of the breaker, then connect both sets of
welder circuit conductors to the pigtails with humongous wirenuts or
split-bolt connectors wrapped with tape.

If you try it the way you've described it, I think you will have trouble
trying to connect 2 sets of wires to the welder receptacle, or not
enough room in the box for a splice.

I will be interested in the answers you get about circuit wires
reentering the service panel because I have the same situation -- I have
a GFCI outlet in a 4" square box connected to my garage subpanel with a
short 1/2" rigid conduit. The "load" wires come back from the GFCI into
the box where I connect to the wires for the left side of garage and the
right side. It is a very neat install unless there is a code violation
problem with the load wires returning to the panel.

Best regards,
Bob

"wahzoo" wrote in message
om...
Please suffer a fairly green question.

I'm planning a house and I'd like to have a welder outlet in both the
basement and the garage. I'm clear about the wire size, type, breaker
etc to use. My question has to do with routing the wire.

95% of the house is concrete, and wiring is in conduit (IMT).

My breaker box is in the basement. Conduit coming out the side of the
breaker box carries conductors that serve the basement. Conduit
comming out of the top of the breaker box carries conductors serving
the garage. If want both welder outlets on one circuit, how do I
route the wires? (PS. I have only one welder, one plugged in at a
time.)

I could run the circuit from the breaker in the breaker box thru the
side conduit to the basement welder outlet, then and back track,
re-entering the breaker box and out the top conduit to the garage
welder outlet. But is this legal?

Can someone give me the NEC reference?

Some breakers are listed to terminate two #10-#14 wires on the breaker (Square D QO and Cutler
Hammer CH). If you don't have those, then it would be better to splice the two wires together and
run a pigtail to the breaker. Running a wire through the panelboard may violate 408.3(A)(3) as
follows:

(3) Same Vertical Section. Other than the required interconnections and control wiring, only those
conductors that are intended for termination in a vertical section of a switchboard shall be located
in that section.

Only way out is to use the horizontal section, or hope that a panelboard is not a switchboard (not
sure of that myself, but it may not be).

--
Mark
Kent, WA

wahzoo wrote:

Please suffer a fairly green question.

I'm planning a house and I'd like to have a welder outlet in both the
basement and the garage. I'm clear about the wire size, type, breaker
etc to use. My question has to do with routing the wire.

95% of the house is concrete, and wiring is in conduit (IMT).

My breaker box is in the basement. Conduit coming out the side of the
breaker box carries conductors that serve the basement. Conduit
comming out of the top of the breaker box carries conductors serving
the garage. If want both welder outlets on one circuit, how do I
route the wires? (PS. I have only one welder, one plugged in at a
time.)

I could run the circuit from the breaker in the breaker box thru the
side conduit to the basement welder outlet, then and back track,
re-entering the breaker box and out the top conduit to the garage
welder outlet. But is this legal?

Can someone give me the NEC reference?

--wahzoo

I don't know about the NEC, but that doesn't make any sense
because the wire would be very long if it runs to an outlet,
back to the box, and then to another outlet (you figure the
actual length). It would make much more sense to run each
wire on a separate breaker, or from the single breaker make
a Y to feed each outlet.

From:


On 5 Jan 2004 12:38:07 -0800, (wahzoo)
wrote:

Please suffer a fairly green question.

I'm planning a house and I'd like to have a welder outlet in both the
basement and the garage. I'm clear about the wire size, type, breaker
etc to use. My question has to do with routing the wire.

95% of the house is concrete, and wiring is in conduit (IMT).

My breaker box is in the basement. Conduit coming out the side of the
breaker box carries conductors that serve the basement. Conduit
comming out of the top of the breaker box carries conductors serving
the garage. If want both welder outlets on one circuit, how do I
route the wires? (PS. I have only one welder, one plugged in at a
time.)

I could run the circuit from the breaker in the breaker box thru the
side conduit to the basement welder outlet, then and back track,
re-entering the breaker box and out the top conduit to the garage
welder outlet. But is this legal?

Can someone give me the NEC reference?

--wahzoo


WHY? This makes no sense.....

Run TWO sets of wire. You should be able to get two of them into the
same breaker on each hot lead. If not, use a pigtail from the
breaker, and splice them inside the box using those real large
wirenuts, and if they are not big enough, use split-bolts and lots of
tape. The grounds should be no problem, just use more screws in the
box.

You CAN re-enter a breaker box for certain applications, for example,
if you have a GFCI outlet that feeds another outlet, and you are using
conduit, where the breaker box happens to be in the center. I have
also wired a few three way switches using the br. box in the center,
where switch wires run thru the box.

Now your breaker box is being used as a raceway. Illegal unless labeled for the
purpose.

Why not run 2 completely seperate welder circuits and breakers? They're
considered "non-coincidental" loads anyway and won't count in the feeder
calculations.

Note: You should wrap split bolts with friction tape first, then
re-wrap with vinyl electrical tape over the top.

(wahzoo) wrote in message . com...
Please suffer a fairly green question.

I'm planning a house and I'd like to have a welder outlet in both the
basement and the garage. I'm clear about the wire size, type, breaker
etc to use. My question has to do with routing the wire.

95% of the house is concrete, and wiring is in conduit (IMT).

My breaker box is in the basement. Conduit coming out the side of the
breaker box carries conductors that serve the basement. Conduit
comming out of the top of the breaker box carries conductors serving
the garage. If want both welder outlets on one circuit, how do I
route the wires? (PS. I have only one welder, one plugged in at a
time.)

I could run the circuit from the breaker in the breaker box thru the
side conduit to the basement welder outlet, then and back track,
re-entering the breaker box and out the top conduit to the garage
welder outlet. But is this legal?

Can someone give me the NEC reference?

--wahzoo

I don't have the US code for reference, but I believe the Canadian
code says that any outlet dedicated to a load over 1500W should be on
a separate circuit. You could get all Clintonish over what "dedicated"
means, but if an inspector wanted to apply such a rule, you wouldn't
be code compliant any way you do this.

I'll also assume that you simply don't have room for two suitable
breaker sets. If it is at all possible to install a breaker for each
outlet - maybe scrunch up some existing circuits onto dual-circuit
breakers? - I'd do so.

And, I am understanding that one big conduit carries all the
conductors for the basement, and another big conduit goes up into the
garage? Hmmm. That does complicate things.

The welder outlets are probably not engineered to daisy-chain
downstream outlets, and it'd be nice to avoid the extra length and
conduit load that the backtracking would require.

I'd probably run both circuits back to the breaker box in their
respective conduits, but then pigtail the hot wires, inside the
breaker box, onto short wires that go to the breakers (plural, I
presume it's 240). The grounds and neutrals (if there are neutrals)
can all go straight to their buses. I wouldn't be *happy* about
putting splices within the breaker box, and I wouldn't expect it to
pass code, but in my humble personal untrained opinion it's probably
the least evil. Multiple hots into one breaker and routing wires
through the breaker box are probably worse, on the scale of things.

And I'd keep the hot wires long enought that they could be wired
directly to their breakers if you ever removed one of the outlets, or
if a big new panel shows up under the Christmas tree some year.

Chip C
Toronto