On Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 7:15:51 AM UTC-4, Robert Green wrote:
wasn't what I was paying attention to.

The bottom line for me is WHY would anyone use an Edison circuit and a
*very* costly two pole GFCI (compared to two single pole) when they could
get by easily with two discrete circuits? It also seems counter-intuitive
to plug two power-hungry devices into the same outlet which is what gets
done with a split-wire receptacle.


Another factor is if you go the peculiar split receptacle approach
that Clare says they use up north, you can forget about having the
GFCI at the receptacle, where it's easy to reset/test. I've never
seen a receptacle with built-in GFCI that's double pole. So, you'd
need a double pole one at the panel. I'd rather have it near where
the receptacle is.

I don't get the whole idea behind splitting a receptacle and putting
each half on different legs. Here I see it done sometimes to put
one half on a switch, the other on all the time, on the *same* circuit.
That makes sense. Say what you want about Edison circuits, but this
Canadian thing, I don't understand what the purpose is all about.
And also, if you want to start in about potentially having two
different circuits in a box live, it's funny that Edison gets dragged
in as the solution. It would seem to me the finger should be pointed
at whoever up in Canada required their screwy split outlets.



There's also the question of whether bringing 240 volts into a wet kitchen
area into one single box is a good idea to begin with. Anything that goes
wrong becomes a potentially much more lethal 240 volt event.


For the most part, it's not going to create a more lethal environment.
If it gets wet, energizes some metal, etc, you still only wind up with
120V to ground. To get 240V, you'd have to somehow wind up across
both legs, and that kind of fault would be extremely rare.