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- Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
- Path: sparky!uunet!walter!porthos!dasher!patter
- From: patter@dasher.cc.bellcore.com (patterson,george r)
- Subject: Re: "balancing" a power panel
- Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
- Date: Sun, 3 Jan 93 22:39:28 GMT
- Message-ID: <1993Jan3.223928.12981@porthos.cc.bellcore.com>
- References: <1992Dec30.201122.18677@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> <1993Jan1.005238.15689@porthos.cc.bellcore.com> <4094@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca>
- Sender: netnews@porthos.cc.bellcore.com (USENET System Software)
- Lines: 38
-
- In article <4094@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:
- >In article <1993Jan1.005238.15689@porthos.cc.bellcore.com> patter@dasher.cc.bellcore.com (patterson,george r) writes:
- >
- >|In this area of the country, the total of each side's breakers cannot
- >|exceed the size of the main breaker by law. Previous postings on this
- >|subject indicate that this is not a universal code.
- >
- >In fact, previous postings show that your area is the exception. Most
- >places don't require this. Must make wiring really wierd. If you have
- >more than a dryer, stove and kitchen, you'd have to have 300A or bigger
- >services. My house would need a 600A main...
-
- Not really. In this area, anyone with any sense of economics uses gas
- for everything they can. That brings you in at 100 or 150 amp service.
- If I had an electric dryer, stove, and water heater, I'd need a 250 amp
- service for my house.
-
- As it is, I have a relatively new 125 amp main breaker and have one empty
- 15 amp circuit left for a four bedroom house. In accordance with practices
- taught me by a military electrician, I have split the existing circuits
- so that none of them have more than nine duplex outlets or twelve light
- fixtures (or any equivalent combination of the two) per 20 amp supply.
- Four of the circuits are dedicated to appliances.
-
- Now, my parents house in Tennessee was all-electric at one time. It had
- one 250 amp fuse panel for the heat, a separate 300 amp breaker panel
- for nearly everything else, and a panel for the shop with four fuses in
- it. With the exception of the shop fuse box, this was typical of houses
- constructed in the 60s in that area. The conduit for the main service
- is about four inches in diameter.
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- | The gum-chewing girl and the cud-chewing cow
- | are very alike, and yet different somehow
- George Patterson - | And after much study I think I know now.
- | It's the clear, thoughtful look
- | on the face of the cow.
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-