I remove the insides of a dead-ish TrippLite ISOBAR power strip and it’s probably good to fall asleep to.

I assemble a small 240V 30A distribution box for some future purposes.

I test out the USB ports on a couple of Addtam power strips, then for good measure I take them apart and lecture everyone about the importance of non-shite power strips. How fun?

I fancied buying a couple of USB cables with in-built power meters, as well as a pair of multimeters with interesting aspects. For some reason all the brand names are capitalized in real life; I didn’t do that just for the title. I’m not yelling, I promise.

I take a look at the HOPI-9800 from #Shenzhen #HOPI Electronic Technology, a meter that displays the supply Voltage and frequency (or “frequence”) as well as the Amperage draw, overall power in Watts, power factor, and annual power consumption.

It’s a somewhat dangerous contraption that’s not all that well put together. And I forgot to even mention the sketchy multi-national power socket.

The WAudio W-3900 Power Conditioner is a well-made PDU/power strip, with a couple of bucks worth of filtering components inside. If it were sold in the $50 price range, I’d definitely recommend it for its solid build quality, decent quality components, and retro looks. But at $180, the amount of power “conditioning” (it’s really just filtering certain frequencies of noise at low levels) doesn’t justify the price, IMHO.

To be fair, the product can be found on AliExpress for $137 at the time of this writing.

Though the marketing materials promise “the highest level of surge & spike protection”, in reality it is not what I would call a surge or spike protector. One weak PTC thermistor is presumably the entire justification for that line, and I’ve seen $15 power strips with more robust surge protection circuitry.

For posterity, here’s the Amazon listing as-is now, before they potentially correct it to be more realistic:

And as promised, here are some close-ups of the circuit board for those of you curious about seeing it in more detail or tracing it out:

OK, So I’m Being a Bit Facetious

Obviously I and most everyone else knows that the vast majority of American household stuff is powered at 120V. Almost all receptacles and (nearly) all lights in a home are indeed supplied at 120V.

But! It’s not as simple as that. So maybe the video title is a tiny bit of clickbait, but it’s also more or less true. Most Americans do indeed have 240V supplied to their home, and that is the line-to-line voltage. The transformer is rated for 240 Volts with a center tap that happens to be referenced to ground/earth, and it just so happens that the potential difference between the center tap (ground) and either of the two lines is 120V RMS.

Full(er) Transcript

What follows is the original script I wrote for the video. Everything you heard in the video is in the script, but I cut some of the more tangential stuff.

So if you’re interested in every last bit of what I could have said, read on…

Hi everybody, I’m Scott and in this video I want to talk about a slight misconception regarding electrical service in the U.S.

I watch a lot of YouTube videos about vintage and modern tech, by people both here in the U.S. and abroad. When talking about powering those devices, the consensus seems to be that in the States we have a 120V electrical system, with 220 to 240 Volts in Europe and 100 Volts in Japan, just to name a few.

So it might surprise you know that standard household electrical service here in the U.S. is 240 Volts, not 120.

Or, rather, not just 120.

(And in actuality it’s more like somewhere between 220 and 250 Volts, and 110 and 125 Volts respectively.)

Though I’m sure many people here already know this, I figured this subject might be of particular interest to people in other parts of the world.

So, let me show you my electrical service.

In my area we obviously have overhead power lines, which I’d say represents the majority of local delivery systems here in America. Many neighborhoods do have underground wiring though, but you’ll usually find those in warmer climates such as in Florida or California.

Underground wiring doesn’t play nicely with the freeze/thaw cycles seen here in New York where temperatures can go anywhere from -10 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (-23 to 43 degrees centigrade).

Yes, there are buried power lines in my area too, but they’re definitely not typical, and generally speaking maintaining them is far more expensive than overhead distribution (and far more disruptive as it would require digging up a street rather than simply bringing a bucket truck.)

Here’s what you’re looking at: At the top is the primary distribution circuit, and those can operate at a wide variety of voltages. I can’t measure mine for obvious reasons, but anywhere from 2KV to 14KV is probable.

As you can see, there’s only one wire supplying us with power. The system voltage is referenced to ground, so the actual Earth is effectively the return conductor on the circuit. That’s a pretty common arrangement the world over.

The primary line connects to this pole mounted transformer, which steps the voltage down to something that’s usable in the home: Namely 240 Volts.

This transformer is shared by various houses in the neighborhood, with the 240V secondary run along here, to the right of the transformer. It’s then tapped anywhere a house needs service.

My house appears to tap power directly adjacent to the transformer, but this cable actually originates a few houses down that way.

My service drop runs from that tap point over my yard and into a weatherhead, then down this conduit to our meter.

The wiring continues on from the meter to what’s commonly called the service panel, breaker box, or circuit breaker panel.

I feel like the breaker panel should be a topic for its own video, and though there are a wide variety of brands and models of panels in the U.S., this is undoubtedly the most common in general appearance, at least for post-1960-ish homes that have a 200 Amp service (which is the common amperage for service to most detached homes).

For this video, the important thing to note is this switch at the top. That’s the main breaker that can cut power to all other circuits in the panel.

And with the cover off, you can see the two connections running into that breaker. Those are the wires coming from the meter outside.

If you didn’t believe me when I said that most homes in the U.S. are fed at 240 Volts (or thereabouts), here’s the proof.

OK, at this point I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the elephant in the room: Messing around in your service panel is dangerous. Especially if the panel is powered. And most especially if you’re shoving metal electrodes into the main terminal lugs, because those are powered directly from the street and have no meaningful overcurrent protection.

In other words, if my test lamps here were faulty or if I simply slipped and managed to create continuity between the two service lugs (or between one of them and ground), I could be electrocuted or start a very problematic house fire. Or both!

So what I’m saying is don’t try this at home, even though I’m being completely hypocritical because I’m quite literally trying this at home. Just be aware that it can kill you and your whole family.

Anywho, getting back to the topic at hand: 240 Volts.

OK, I’m being a bit sneaky by repeatedly mentioning that 240V is our standard household voltage. While that is indeed the voltage being supplied by the transformer, the vast majority of electrical outlets in an American home supply power at 120 Volts, as is well known.

So, what’s going on? Well, I purposely forgot to mention the neutral wire.

Because of the way the transformer behind my house is oriented, you can’t see the connection points for the low voltage side. But this is pretty much the same type of unit, and you’ll see that there are three secondary connections. Those are generally referred to as L1, N, and L2, for Line 1, Neutral, and Line 2.

L1 and L2 are both live (also called “hot”) conductors, while N is a grounded conductor. (Note that it’s not the grounding conductor, which in the house is always separate from the neutral – except in the service panel. Again, I’ll need to do a whole video on the panel at some point.)

L1 and L2 are out of phase with each other by 180 degrees, meaning their waveforms look like this.

The RMS (root-mean-square) difference – the way A/C voltage is typically measured – between these two waveforms is 240 Volts.

However, the difference between L1 and N is 120V RMS, as is the difference between L2 and N.

Let’s take a look at this much smaller AC transformer that’s rated for a 120V primary and a 12V secondary. In other words it’s a step-down transformer for operating 12V equipment such as relays or lights.

On the primary side it has two connections: One for live and one for neutral. This is just like the transformer behind my house, where the live conductor was operating at multiple kilovolts, and the neutral was quite literally the ground beneath it.

On the output side there are three connections, just like it’s bigger brother. We could call them L1, N, and L2.

So, let me connect this to a supply voltage and do some probing.

Again, like a scaled down version of its bigger brother, the two outer terminals measure 12V relative to each other.

If I measure from either of the outer lugs to the center lug, it’s 6V!

The oscilloscope also shows that, just like the 240 volts coming into my house, there are two sine waves that are 180 degrees out of phase with each other when measuring 12 volts on the outer two connections.

From either of those connections to the center tap there’s only a single sine wave.

And also like the primary side of the transformer outside, this transformer only has a single phase at 120V relative to neutral/ground.

As much as I’d love to take that transformer apart, I kinda need it, so let me just show you a diagram of what’s going on here:

A transformer like this consists of two coils of wire wound around a common core. A difference in voltage between one side of the transformer and the other is created by varying the number of times the wire is physically wound around the core on both sides.

The ratio of turns on one side versus the other is the same as the ratio of the voltage on one side versus the other.

So If both sides have exactly the same number of turns, the input and output voltage will be exactly the same. If one side has twice as many turns as the other, that side will have twice the voltage as the other side.

This transformer, to step down 120V to 12V, would have 10 times as many turns on the 120V side as the 12V side. Just for the sake of example, let’s say there are 1000 turns on the 120V side and 100 on the 12V side. What if we took a wire and soldered it right here, and then measured the voltage between these two points?

Well, in the space between those two connections there are 50 turns. The ratio is then 50 to 1000, and so the voltage here will be 20 times lower than the voltage here. Hence when I supply the transformer with 120V, you can see 6V!

And this is inherently bidirectional in principle: I could feed 12V into this transformer here and measure 120V here.

In other words, a simple transformer like this can be used to either step-up or step-down voltage. In fact, it’s the same for the transformer on the pole.

I should also note that in the real world transformers are not nearly as simple as I’m making them sound, but the general idea is correct.

And that’s how residential electrical supply in the US works.

It’s called a split phase system, because the single phase coming from the distribution grid is effectively split into two by the center tapped transformer.

The upshot of all this is that I have both 120V and 240V outlets in my house, as with most houses.

240V is widely used, but mainly for large permanently installed equipment like hot water heaters, air conditioners, clothes dryers, stoves, ovens, hot tubs, electric car charging and even whole-house heating. Basically in any situation where a lot of power is required.

However, you can call an electrician and have them wire a 240V outlet anywhere you might need it.

The only sticking point is that if you’re looking to run, for example, vintage European 240V computers, they may or may not be compatible with our 60 Hertz system. That being said, for equipment that solely uses DC voltage internally, the capacitors on the low voltage side would probably have an easier job of maintaining charge at the higher frequency. I think it’s potentially more problematic the other way around, using equipment rated for 60Hz on 50Hz systems.

But don’t take my word for it, double check that for your particular device before applying power.

As a side note, it’s pretty common (though far from universal) for US households to have a natural gas connection. I have one, and so therefore my water heater, clothes dryer, stove, oven, and so-called boiler are all gas-fed. That leaves a nearly ridiculous amount of amperage available for things like computers and electric cars.

So I hope you found that interesting. Split phase power has its advantages and disadvantages, and of course there’s a lot more to it than what I’ve outlined in this video. But the main advantage for me personally is that I can operate random 240V electronics at home, as well as all the usual American 120V stuff. In fact, most of the UPSes and servers here in my basement are running at 240V!

I’m getting off on a tangent here, but you may have noticed that this is decidedly NOT a smart meter, and though it’s a pretty old-school design these are still quite common here in the States. It does actually require a person to come and read it manually.

Where I live, we’re billed monthly, but the meter is only read every other month. The power company estimates usage for billing in the intermediate month, though I could manually report my meter reading if I was a stickler for paying the exact amount.

My power company (as many do) offers something called balanced billing, where they charge a fixed amount every month based upon your previous year’s usage patterns. That can be very helpful if, for example, you have a gas heating system and therefore use very little electricity in the winter, but have the air conditioning is running all summer. It wouldn’t be uncommon to have a bill four or five times the cost in the summer versus the winter, so that can help quite a lot when it comes to cash flow.

Well, that’s it for now. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe and do the liking thing and all the regular YouTube outro stuff. You can also examine my website at s.co.tt, which is totally a real URL.

I tried whenever possible to make it clear that I was talking about the most common way in which power is delivered to an American home. There are exceptions, of course.

For example, if you live in an apartment in the US your building may be fed by three-phase power, which is quite standard for commercial and industrial properties. In that case you, as the tenant, will most likely only have access to 120V circuits and there probably won’t be any 240V circuits available anyway.

Even if your building is fed by split-phase power, your landlord might have no need to supply your apartment with any 240V circuits.

Power delivery in rural areas can be a little weird, so for all I know there might be single phase 120V systems out there.

And finally some older homes may still have single-phase 120V distribution panels (which are probably fuse boxes), even in neighborhoods where split-phase power is otherwise in place.

Also this video is intended as a general interest thing, and so don’t take my word as absolute gospel on any of these issues. I don’t have the capacity to bestow any magical powers of electrical licensing on any of you.

Another sh*tty power strip

Welp, they’ve done it again. Any by “they”, I mean people that make poor quality electrical devices. Specifically Yellow Jacket, which is a Woods brand, which is a Coleman Cable brand, which is probably somehow owned by either Warren Buffet or the Koch Brothers.

I got this for $16.22 during an Amazon lighting deal, and even though that’s not a terrible price, the poor quality construction and the basic lie about the materials is what really angers me.

Join me as I disassemble and then curse at this poor excuse for a power strip, in my newest installment of first world problems.

Oshkoshbegosh!? Another long ramble about power distribution thingies for the home and/or office?!

Well it’s true. Hopefully my next video will not be about this subject.

This compares the relatively-generically-branded Belkin Advanced Surge Protector (which actually bears the handy model number of BE112230-08, like it came out of some kind of dystopian nightmare) to the easily-spoken Furman SS-6B (which itself sounds shockingly dystopian anyway).

I was searching for an “affordable” power distribution unit for some video-related equipment in a rack. The Technical Pro PS9U looked very appealing with its multiple light-up switches on the front, because they made me all sentimental and wistful for the days of switched under-monitor PDUs.

It took a dark turn when I looked at the negative reviews on Amazon, wherein one person uploaded pictures of a melted-down unit. I still bought the PDU, not because I wanted to use it, but purely because I wanted to take it apart for YouTube.

And indeed the Amazon review turned out to be accurate. I would not feel comfortable using the Technical Pro PDU in my house. In my opinion as a random guy on the internet, it is a fire hazard, is poorly made, and shouldn’t even be on the market.

For my actual use, I also bought a Cyberpower CPS-1220RMS PDU. It’s a bit different than the Technical Pro in that it doesn’t have independently-switched outputs, offers surge protection, and is rated at 20A rather than 15A (though “rated” is a strong word in the case of the PS9U). That’s just on the surface, though. Inside, the Cyberpower shows every mark of quality and clearly supports its 20A rating.

In the video I open up the Cyberpower, just to show you what a quality PDU should look like. The comparison between the two products is day and night, even though I got the Cyberpower unit for a mere $15 more (on sale). It’s absolutely worth the higher price (even when not on sale).

The bottom line here is that when it comes to power distribution — be it rack-mounted or a typical power strip style — you should spend the extra money to get the higher-quality unit. Your fire insurance provider will thank you, as might your family (if it comes to that).

I got a Volt/Amp/Watt/Wh Meter from Banggood and wanted to put it to some use. So I decided to stick it in the back of a receptacle box, making some kind of metered extension cord.

This video shows the process of doing that, but is also a test of the Blackmagic Video Assist 4K vs. the Atomos Shogun for a review I’m working on. It’s a literal side-by-side comparison of the two. Though there’s no difference in quality (there shouldn’t be — they were both recording in ProRes HQ via SDI), I recorded about an hour of footage and neither one showed dropped frames or sync issues during that time. So far so good.

More to come on that later..

I recently got a good deal on a 120V 3000VA APC SURTA3000XL, a 120 pound beast of a double conversion online UPS which boasts over 30 mins of runtime at half load (and that’s still over 1000 Watts)! It didn’t come with batteries, so this video shows the process of “refurbishing” a couple of old modules with new batteries, and testing out the UPS.

The reason I was hunting down reasonably priced DCO UPS wasn’t because I’m especially concerned about poor-quality power from my wall, but because I needed a UPS that would play nice with generator power.

I’d love to be able to afford a couple of ~7500 Watt inverter style generators (one primary and one backup) to run the whole house during a power failure, but the best I can do is a pair of contractor style gensets. They’re noisy and output a mess of voltages and frequencies, but they work. Well, they didn’t work with line interactive UPSes, but they’ll work fine with something like this APC.

Apparently I was so distressed by the non-metal “metal” Defiant power strip from Home Depot that I made a video about it.

If you hate videos but love text, then mosey on over to my previous post about this travesty of a product, and follow my adventures getting pissed off about their HDX Whatever Something Light.

Just to be clear, Home Depot: Your terrible, terrible light has not been libeled.

The Rejected Review

I know that I tend to be harsh in my criticisms, but this is the most recent review that I tried to post to Home Depot’s site regarding their HDX 150-Watt Incandescent Clamp Light CE-300PDQ:

Very rarely do I wish I could give a product a negative number of stars, but this is one of them.

I know that for under ten bucks I shouldn’t expect an extremely high-quality, durable item. I know that at this price the light could fall apart completely after a bit of use and it wouldn’t be a huge deal.

But what it absolutely shouldn’t do is cause a fire, which is what TWO out of the SIX of these I own was about to do.

Let me explain: I bought six of these in total from 2 different Home Depots in my area for some hobbyist videography lighting. The point is that the faulty units came from different stores on different days, so they might well have been from separate lots.

The first faulty light that I bought developed a problem after about 3 weeks of very light use (no pun intended): The bulb wouldn’t illuminate unless it was wiggled into a very specific position. It wasn’t a problem with the contacts or the bulb — the issue was inside the socket assembly, which is riveted together and inaccessible.

With a bulb in just the “right” position the fixture would work. Except that after about a month of occasional use the bulb would flicker, and along with flickering it would make the sound of an electrical arc. Again, not the bulb’s fault — I swapped out the bulb more than a couple of times and the problem was the same. The contacts looked good, the wire was secure in the base, the switch seemed OK.

The second bad fixture worked for a little while. Then suddenly I went to plug it in and got no light, but really loud arcing quickly followed by smoke. It was doing this regardless of whether the switch was on or off. Needless to say I unplugged it, but being curious I removed the bulb and plugged the fixture back in. I still got the loud arcing.

This is clearly a problem with the units themselves.

These fixtures never left my basement. They were never dropped or abused; In fact, they were probably used for a total of a few hours. I was using 24W CFLs, too — not something that would generate a lot of heat. And those same CFLs worked (and still work) absolutely fine in other fixtures.

That’s why I’d recommend strongly AGAINST buying this product. If I’d have left either of those fixtures unattended or on a timer, I’d probably wouldn’t have time to write this review since I’d be too busy haggling with the insurance company over the price of a new house.

If you already own these, don’t leave them unattended. They may be working fine now, but just wait…

And the guidelines cited by Home Depot when rejecting my review:

• Focus on the product. Yup, I did that.
• Avoid writing about customer service issues – instead, contact us to discuss your concerns. I did not write about customer service issues.
• Do not mention competitors or the specific price you paid. I did mention that it was “under ten bucks”, but that is most certainly not the specific price.
• Do not include any personally identifiable information such as your full name or address. I’m OK here, too. I was tempted to post my social security number, but I refrained because I’ve heard that there’s crime on the internet nowadays.

I’m guessing that they didn’t appreciate my hyperbole at the end. But there’s nothing in their guidelines regarding sardonicism either, so I should be clear on that front.

By the way, let’s take a closer look at the third item in that list.

Why the fug can’t I mention competitors in my review? I assume that they mean competitors of Home Depot, not the product’s manufacturer. However, in this case HDX is a Home Depot brand. They are forbidding me from comparing this item to another item just like it from any other manufacturer.

That’s absolute horse hockey. There’s no way in hell that you can have a fair review section if you forbid comparison to similar items. Some of the most useful negative online reviews are ones that mention an alternate, better choice to satisfy the same need. Not on HomeDepot.com.

And I’m no fool. I understand that they don’t want you saying something like “just buy it at Lowe’s, it’s cheaper there!” Fair enough because even though that information could be valuable to another customer, prices fluctuate constantly. Price comparisons in reviews don’t hold water for very long.

But their guideline is far too broad. It would forbid a perfectly reasonable statement like “Lowe’s sells basically the same socket set under their Kobalt brand, and IMO it’s much better quality.” Ed note: That’s not my opinion, it’s just an example. I’ve never used a Kobalt socket set, but I’m quite happy with the Husky (HD’s brand) sockets that I have. Despite the fact that Husky is a very, very, very stupid brand name.

That’s a very useful bit of consumer advice, and is only fair if the reviewer indeed had experience with both tool sets. Yet I’m sure it would be immediately stricken from Home Depot’s site. Hey, prove me wrong Home Depot.

Not a word of that review is a lie.

If they want to sell an Instant Electrical Fire Kit, then at least put it on the shelves next to the fire extinguishers. My only regret is that I threw out the fixture that was arcing and smoking, because now I’d love to have made a video showing it causing the inevitable fire.

I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to throw in some keywords…

…such as re-iterating that the model number is CE-300PDQ and telling you that the internet number on Home Depot’s site is 100354511 and that the store SKU is 277894. The light (if it didn’t malfunction catastrophically) is great for DIY projects, photography, videography, shop lighting, and temporary lighting. It’s commonly called a clamp light, but sometimes it’s called a work light, clip light, dish light, or wacky monzelfrazen.

Phew, hopefully that will cause this post to show up somewhere reasonably high on the Google results. If they don’t want the review on their site then I’ll gladly let people view it here.

Finally…

It wouldn’t be a rant on s.co.tt if I didn’t mention some problems with their website:

They strip out carriage returns and line feeds.

Even though I took the time to format my review into paragraphs, they turned it into one fat blob of text. That’s a big pet peeve of mine, and a surprising number of sites do it.

They send too many emails.

After I’d submitted my review, their site prompted me to answer other customers’ questions about the product. I was in a giving mood, so I did.

The question was “does this lamp has a regular outlet plugin? (sic)”

They sent a separate “verify your email address” email for each of my 4 answers. That’s on top of a verification email for the review. The verification should be on a per-address basis, because the address doesn’t change.

Their reviews are powered by bazaarvoice.com.

I don’t trust Home Depot with my personal information, especially after their various — how to put it politely? — oopsies with their customer’s data. But who the frack is bazaarvoice.com?

Well, they are a legitimate company, and they must be doing pretty well to have Home Depot as a customer.

However, Home Depot fails to mention that you’re sharing your email address with Bazaarvoice, Inc., at least in any obvious way. The Bazaarvoice service is white labeled, so it fits in somewhat seamlessly with the design of HD’s website. When submitting a review, I could only find Bazaarvoice mentioned once in the terms and conditions.

Just because I became morbidly curious, I quickly looked in their “Privacy Security (sic)” page for any mention of Bazaarvoice. No mention.

However, as soon as I clicked the link on the product page to “Write a Review“, there were tons of HTTP requests to Bazaarvoice’s site.

The review (and your email address) are sent to them as well.

Bazaarvoice was actually the one sending the needlessly repetitious email verification messages.

This is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind when I made Instance Mail. There’s no reason to give these people your real email address. In fact, they ask for lots of demographic information as well, which I assume they aggregate and resell for marketing purposes. (Personally I provide all fake information, but I believe that the fields are optional.)

And that’s about it. (Maybe.)

I suppose that I’m done ranting about Home Depot for today. I’m sure that I’ve got more somewhere deep inside, but I’ll save it for another day.

Of course, the whole point point behind a PHEV is the actual plugging in.  The Volt comes with a 120V charger that plugs into your average 15A receptacle, and can fully charge the car in about 10 hours.

Chevrolet’s charging station partner, SPX, sells a variety of Level 2 charging stations compatible with the Volt (and most plug-in electric vehicles, including the Nissan Leaf).  The Level 2 charging stations use 240V, and can charge the Volt in about 4 hours.  We’re going to be getting the least expensive charger, the Voltec, for installation in our garage.  That’s going to be “Phase II” of this project.

Phase I consists of getting wiring in place that will eventually be used by the Level 2 charger, temporarily configured for Level 1 (120V) charging using a standard receptacle.

I’m fortunate to have an electrical sub-panel in my garage, so wiring the new charging station is going to be relatively easy.  The twist is that I put an electric meter in-line so that I can monitor Sparky’s energy usage.

Here’s a pictorial overview of the project:

My sub-panel was almost full, and I had to move a breaker down to the bottom-right to make room for a double pole breaker.  The feeder is protected by a 50A breaker on the main panel — the 100A main breaker pictured is just used as a disconnect.

I ran some EMT from the panel up into the garage attic.  The charging station is going to be positioned on the opposite wall, and I wanted to run the wiring hidden on that side of the garage.

In the garage attic, the EMT terminates at a junction box so I can transition to MC for an easier run across the attic and down the garage wall.  I needed about a 5″ offset because the finished wall in the garage is proud of the wall pictured (which is actually the side of my house).

THWN waiting to be connected to the MC wiring.  All wires are #12.

The main reason I didn’t use EMT in the attic is because there are a lot of turns in tight places.  This cable is fed from the upper-right of this picture after it passes overhead between the roof rafters.  It’s fed through the top plate of the wall below in the lower-left.  The next picture shows where it terminates.

Cable from the attic, along with a jumper that will go between the meter and the charging station.

Here’s the meter pan and the box for a temporary 120V receptacle.  (More on that to come).  The wires are coming out of the bottom of the box because I left some extra slack in the wall for the eventual mounting of the Level 2 charging station (which doesn’t require a box).

VERY IMPORTANT: In the next few pictures there are things shown that you should not imitate.  They show temporary wiring that will only be serviced by me, and it will be gone within the week.

New circuit wired to a new double-pole breaker.  Note that I have used a red wire as a neutral.  That is an incorrect practice according to the NEC, and general logic.  In about a week, this circuit will be converted to 240V by moving the red wire to the other pole of the breaker in the upper-left.

This is the junction box in the garage attic.  I’ve re-labeled the white conductor in the MC red, which is incorrect when it’s used as a grounded conductor (neutral).  It is acceptable practice for the future use as a 240V circuit.

The meter I purchased requires a 240V circuit, so for now the meter socket connections are bypassed, and there is plenty of extra slack left on the wires.  Again, what’s pictured is not the correct practice for wiring a 120V circuit, as the white neutral wire has been re-labeled red, indicating it is “hot”.  Also, without the meter in place this box can’t be adequately covered, which is also incorrect.  The neutral terminals have here been used both to connect the two grounding wires, and to bond the box to the grounding wire from the panel.  I believe this is acceptable practice, and though the terminals look large, the plate on the meter pan does permit a minimum of #14 wire under those terminals.

The receptacle unit is wired and ready to go into the box.  Note that this is not a “back stab” connection.  The wires are attached by compression terminals.  It’s also a duplex receptacle, which should not be used on a dedicated circuit, but again, this is temporary.

The meter socket and Level 1 charger.  I forgot the exact meaning of the lights on the charger, but I do know that the top two lights would indicate a wiring fault if they were anything but both green.  So it appears I have success!  One last note on safety:  The meter socket looks incredibly dangerous in this picture, as the contacts are, shall we say, overly accessible.  I just want to point out again that those contacts are not connected to the circuit.  This box is still unsafe because it’s improperly covered without the meter in place, but there are no exposed live conductors.  Again, this is very temporary.

Here’s Sparky, enjoying her first meal in the garage.

Stay tuned for Phase II of the project, when all will be made right with the electrical wiring, and our new 240V Level 2 charging station will be installed!

Update (2011-06-07): The new Voltec Charge Station is installed!  Check out the new post:

Installing Our New 240V/Level 2 Voltec Charge Station (Phase II)

I’ve been wanting to upgrade the electrical since I moved in about 7 months ago, and I figured I’d do it in EMT. It’s rather stupid because the wall I’m installing most of the conduit on is adjacent to the house — however it’s framed separately, and there is a ~2″ gap between the back of the framing and the side of the house. It would make a perfect wiring chase for NM-B, making the job a hell of a lot cheaper and easier. But I wanted EMT because, well, for fun. It looks cool too. This is the first project I’ve ever piped and I made a few mistakes (like not putting offsets at the boxes), but I learned a lot.

This is by far not my first electrical project, and it’s probably not for the faint of heart.

Background

The garage had 2 20A circuits running to it, one for lighting and 1 recept. group, and the other for just receptacles. Lighting consisted of a single 100W bare bulb in the garage, and another in the garage attic. The receptacles are all about 12-18″ off the floor, and were always getting blocked by crap I’d store against the walls. A couple are damaged; probably the previous h/o had been doing a project of his own and knocked into them.

The circuits were basically fine for me for the time being — my highest draw tools are a 15A contractor table saw and a 12A shop vac. So long as I ran their cords to opposite sides of the garage, I’d be fine. (Of course, I couldn’t run my compressor at the same time).

The lighting was my main problem. I’d get plenty of natural light during the day, but at night I’d need to set up portable lights, which is inconvenient at best and they’re never in the right place at the right time.
I happened to rip a 4-bulb T8 fluorescent fixture out of my kitchen recently (I installed recessed cans in its place), which is plenty bright. So my plan was to put that in the garage, plus a couple of other light fixtures, and also add some more receptacles.

Pics follow.  If anyone has suggestions, comments, criticisms, etc., please let me know!

Front of the garage. Good lumber storage above, but it makes lighting difficult.

Back of the garage. Good natural lighting and ventilation. I have a couple of window fans I use for cooling and venting out paint fumes.

My fantastic task lighting. Ceiling is 10ft. high.

First Home Depot run. Didn’t forget much. Figured I’d post this in case anyone wanted to know what brands I’m using.

New main light fixture. Sorry for the weird angle, but it’s the only way I could get the full conduit run in there.

Lights in the front. I realized far too late that the one in the background gets hit by the door, so now I can’t get it open.  I’ll have to move it back to the next 2×4. Fortunately I did those lights with MC and not EMT, so it should be an easy move.

The jbox just after the panel on the bottom will have a dedicated MWBC split onto 2 receptacles on the same yoke. Next jbox just has wiring connections, no devices. You can see some AC coming out of it; they feed 2 new single-bulb fluorescent fixtures. The EMT coming out the bottom of that box goes to a receptacle unit with a dedicated circuit, to be used for chargers, a radio, and other things.

The conduit that goes up into the ceiling in the previous pic comes out here, in the garage attic. It looks a bit weird, but the offset goes back towards the wall (~3″) and also to the left. It is plumb where it heads up towards the jbox, even though it looks angled in this pic. The NM-B coming out of the jbox goes to 2 luminaires on the front of the garage — they are controlled by the timer in the next pic. Some NM-B that currently runs to a switch next to the door in the back of the garage will enter this jbox from the left.

Timer for the outdoor lights. The GFCI supplies the timer/lights — personal preference, but I like my outdoor lighting on GFI. I had to put offsets in the EMT coming from the panel because the knockouts close to the wall are all blocked by the neut. buss bar!

Receptacles closest to the front of the garage — at the end of the conduit run that goes off the right of the panel. I needed to get some usable power coming off the new panel so I can have lights when I disconnect and re-wire the existing circuits.

Close-up of the panel. Not much done yet — the circuit hooked up is the one from the above pic.

Details

50A breaker at the main panel (in the basement, about 6 feet below and 6 feet to the left of the sub).

6/3 feeder. (Yes, I bought 125 ft. of 6/3. I just could not bring myself to spend $2.36/ft. when I could get 125 ft. for $136).  I figure I’ll use it eventually, or at least sell it.

100A disconnect at the sub.

Why only 50A, and not 100A+? Simply because I don’t need more than 50A. And if I ever do, I can pull a new line from the main panel to the garage. It’s a very easy pull. The only reason I’m doing a sub is b/c I don’t have space in the main panel for all those breakers.  (And yes, I like LOTS of circuits).

I’ll connect the existing receptacles near the floor to the sub today or tomorrow.

All wiring in conduit is 12 AWG THHN/THWN. The NM-B in the attic is 14/2 and will be on a 15A breaker. Existing receptacles were wired with 12-2 NM-B. I tagged the wiring for each circuit with its own color of electrical tape. Wiring is tagged in every box, even if it doesn’t terminate in that box.

EGC is #12, except where it hits a future 240V/30A receptacle; there it’s #10 from the panel. I didn’t want to use the EMT to bond everything together. I don’t have a good reason for that…

UPDATE 2009-06-10

I didn’t do anything last night, but did some new work on Monday. I also did three stupid things:

1) I mounted a light switch upside down.

2) I shorted the neut. to ground in a box and almost didn’t notice.. You’ll see — it’s not quite as stupid as it sounds (well, maybe it is).

3) I bought the wrong switch. Or they mfr. them in an illogical fashion.

The good news is I moved the light that was blocking the garage door. They all work, and it’s a heck of a lot brighter in there!

Upside-down switch. I was in a hurry to get the new lights on.  This switch was existing and has 14/3 NM-B to the box from the attic. Luckily the 14/3 in the attic was just sorta strung on a nail with tons of slack. I was able to easily get it to the new metal box in the attic, and I properly secured the cable to the rafters.

I installed this switch just to the right of the box w/the GFI recep. and the timer. It’s to control the attic lights, and is slaved off of the main light switch.

This switch has a pilot light. When I saw the switch I thought “the light must go on and off with the switch”. Not so! It just stays on constantly.

You can see where the insulation is chafed on the white wire, and a little bit on the red wire, too. When I put the switch in the wire rubbed against the EMT coupling, hard. I didn’t notice, but the neut. screw was also touching the coupling when the unit was fully seated, and the hot screw was maybe a millimeter from shorting.  I’ll be replacing it with a plain single pole switch, which is much thinner in the back.

Oh, one more thing: All the other boxes are bonded to each other with wire. This box is only bonded by the EMT. It’s a switch, so I’m not terribly concerned; I’ll probably leave it that way.

Close-up of 2 boxes, for no reason.

Lighting connections, ready for a box cover. (You can kinda see the tail of one of them, but there are anti-short bushings in the ends of the MC. The box is bonded to that green pigtail, too).

That’s it for now.  More to come later..