"Gary H" wrote in
message
...
On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:04:22 -0500, "Ralph
Mowery"
wrote:


"Tman" wrote in
message
...

LOL, OP here. I took a couple EE courses
when working
on my MS aerospace
engineering and did an internship where I
designed one
of the lightest 400Hz DC-AC inverter for
aerospace
use. I get the split phase, peak / RMS
business quite fine. I'm just not totally up
to speed
with what's code and what's not -- and this
rig seemed
to be amiss. I guess in the name of being
pedantic, I'll point out
that the two hots probably are not exactly
"180
degrees" out of phase and "mirror images" of
each other; close but in real life situations
the
reactive loads will not
be [perfectly] identical across both phases,
making
the out-of-phase, well
just a little bit different than pi radians


T

What you are calling two hots are comming from
a center
tapped transformer.
There is only one phase. They can not be out
of phase
with each other by any ammount not counting a
couple of
inches of wire from the transfromer windings
to the
load.

It depends on your point of reference. The
normal point
of reference (for wiring on the transformer
secondary)
is in the MIDDLE (center-tapped coil). Points
are
measured from that. That is, 2 phases.

What may be confusing to some, is these 2
phases are not
2 of the 3 phases being supplied to the
transformer.

The wiring comming into a normal house in the US
is
single phase. Not two phase. True two phase
power has
the phases 90 deg out instead of the so called
180 deg .

Two phase powe can be made from a 3 phase
circuit, but it
requires more than a simple center tapped
transformer the
normal house has.

Technicall it's called split phase.