You're also presuming that the heat generated by pulling 60 amps through a
#6 copper wire would cause it to reach it's flash point. I'm pretty
confident that the NEC has figured in considerable leeway



"Eigenvector" wrote in message
. ..

"Doug Miller" wrote in message
...
In article k.net,
"David Martel" wrote:
RBM,


60 is fine

Is the OP wrong that the #6 line is rated for only 55 amps or are you
saying that a 60 amp breaker is safe with wire that will fail at 55 amps.
Something is wrong here.

Nothing is wrong at all. The NEC specifically permits going up to the
next
higher standard breaker size when the rated ampacity of the wire (55A in
this
case) does not correspond to any standard breaker size.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)


That doesn't make sense to me at all.

Why allow the breaker to trip at a higher rating than the wire?
Conceivably the wire would fail without the breaker ever tripping. That
presumes the wire rating of 55 A means it is only capable of carrying 55A
at 120V