"farseer" wrote in message
ups.com...
Hello,

in my home are a few 240v outlets that used to serve air conditioners.
We now have a central air system, so those outlets are no longer
needed.

Can i leave the 240v outlets as is and plug any old device into them?
For instance, if i were to plug my alarm clock into that outlet, what
would happen?

How can iconvert them to 120v outlets? is it simply a matter of using
only one of the two hot wires to wire a new 15 or 20 am outlet?

Years ago I plugged my electric razor into a 240v outlet in Israel. It
immediately went up in a puff of blue smoke. I expect your clock would meet
a similar fate.

Does the outlet have 3 holes or 4? If 3 (which is almost certain to be the
case) you have no neutral and cannot use it for anything but devices that
need pure 240v. If 4, you could use it as the basis for a multiwire
circuit.

BUT, if 3 you can pull replace the 240 breaker with a 120v breaker; and put
the left over hot (hopefully a white wire) into the neutral bus. You will
now have, as soon as you replace the outlet with a 120v outlet, a 120v
circuit!
Obviously you have to be certain that you replace all the 240 components
with their 120v counterpart, and that you get everything sized properly, but
it is not difficult.