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Bruce L. Bergman

On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 02:51:30 GMT, (Doug White)
wrote:

Now that I have established some metal content, I have a question about
my screwy house wiring. The knowledge base here is about as broad as it
gets, so I figure soembody will have some ideas.

We have an outlet in our dining room that appears to be a 220V 15A duplex
outlet. It looks like a regular 110V 15A grounded outlet, except the
blades for the plugs are both horizontal. It was presumably installed
for a large window air conditioner before central air was installed. It
is live, and I measured ~220V AC with a DVM across the two blades.

I'd like to convert this to a regular 115V 15A outlet. I assumed that I
would find a dual lever 15A breaker in the panel box, and that I could
just connect one of the hot leads to neutral and install a single phase
breaker. I haven't had time to take the breaker box cover off the
breakers, but there are NO 15A dual breakers in the box.

They are supposed to run a dual breaker with a handle-tie to kill
the power to both sides of the circuit if one side trips - but
"supposed to be" does not always mean they did.

They could also have used one 15A and one 20A, or two 20A breakers,
as long as it has 12-GA or larger wire to the receptacle.

I'll pop the cover in a day or so when I have time. In the meantime,
does anyone have any idea what I should be looking for inside the box
that might identify the related breaker? I've got a breaker tracing
gadget, but it's designed to plug into a 115V outlet. There is also no
guarantee that the outlet & breaker hookup were done correctly. I don't
know if the "ground" hole in the outlets is connected to a real ground or
neutral, or how to tell.

You can make an adapter cord with pin-type test plugs to connect
your breaker finder to one hot lead and the safety ground prong - that
will send your breaker finder signal back on one side of the 240V
circuit. Change the leads to find the other side's breaker.

And if you have a 3-wire circuit in the receptacle box with two hots
and a neutral, consider removing the Split Tab on a 20A 120V (T-slot
Neutral) commercial duplex receptacle and having two dedicated 120V
circuits on the one receptacle. Now you have two 20A 120V circuits
available - perfect for a party, put the two 50-cup percolators there.
Or let the DJ plug in his sound and lighting systems.

-- Bruce --