[Danknuggler]

OK Ok, so 10/2 throughout no prob.You guys seem to think its going be tough to wire all that in the gang box using that ga wire?I'm going to try.I'll post it up here when I build it maybe then someone can make sure I did it correct.Thanks for all the help again fellas.

[madpenguin]

A quad gang box has AMPLE room. One 10/2 coming in with a total of 12 pig tails and 4 blue wirenuts .... Sure. It's going to be tight. That's why you stuff your wires to the back of the box. It won't be over cubed, I can almost guarantee that. Remeber grounds count as one and you will have no internal clamps.

[Danknuggler]

Originally Posted by madpenguin

Looks pretty easy to me. 10/2 with ground on a 30A double pole breaker in your main panel. Put a black piece of tape around the white wire that attaches to the 30A breaker. Both black and white wires will attach to the 30A DP breaker in the main panel. Attach the bare ground wire to the neutral/grounding bus terminal in the main panel.

If you have exposed joists in the basement, use a 3/4" auger bit to drill thru the joists. Drill right through the center of the joist with relation to top and bottom. Also, try to stay near a concrete wall. Try not to drill through the middle third span wise of a joist if that makes sense. These holes are to fish your 10/2 with ground through. Buy a piece of grey electrical conduit at Home Depot. Once you want to take the 10/2 down the side of the basement concrete wall, attach the grey electrical conduit to the wall with masonry screws and 1/2" pipe clamps to secure the electrical conduit. Just push your 10/2 down the conduit until it comes out the bottom. Looks like there is a knockout on the side of the timer. Buy a white plumbing elbow or something to mate with the electrical conduit so you can run the 10/2 into the timer so no cable is exposed. Mount the timer to the concrete wall with masonry screws as well.

With me so far? Everything securely fastened.... Take your incoming black wire and attach it to terminal 1. Take your incoming white wire and attach it to terminal 3. Take the incoming bare wire and attach it to the ground screw. Put a piece of black electrical tape arond the white wire in the timer box.

Buy some MC cable that has 10/2 with ground. Run it out of another knockout in the timer box. The green sheathed wire attaches to the grounding screw. The black wire attaches to terminal 2. The white wire (put a piece of black tape around it) attaches to terminal 4.

Take this length of 10/2 MC (Metal Clad) cable and run it how ever far you need to get it to where you want your receptacles. Buy a quad gang box.


Try to use the metal ones. Take the MC cable through one of the middle knockouts. Unless your really skilled with a hack saw, you'll want to buy some MC cable cutters.



The roll of MC you bought should come with redheads (anti-short bushings). Cut enoungh of the jacket off the MC so you have atleast a foot of conductors sticking in the quad metal box. Use a metal NM connector to securely fasten the MC cable to the metal box.



So once you install the redhead into your freshly cut MC cable (to protect the inside conductors from getting damaged on the rough cut edges of your MC outer sheathing, tighten down the NM connector until the MC cable is held securely in place.

Now you have about 12" of green, black and white conductors in the quad metal box with about 3/8" of MC cable jacket entering the box. Get a green grounding screw. These can be had at Lowes or Home depot as well.



Strip atleast 6 inches of the green insulation off until your left with bare copper conductor. Find a hole in the quad metal box that one of those green grounding screws fit into. Start threading it just a couple turns so it stays. Take your stripped green insulated conductor and wrap it around the grounding screw paying close attention that when you tighten the grounding screw down all the way, it will pull the bare conductor tight and not squeeze it out. Once the green grounding screw is really torqued down, You should have bought atleast 4 grounding leads from Home depot or lowes as well.



Actually, forget about buying the grounding screws separate because we can use the ones that come with the pigtails. bare Whatever few inch piece of copper is left from when you tightened down the grounding screw, take a pair of linemans pliers and mechanically twist all the grounds together. Then wirenut 4 of the above grounding pigtails to the bare copper conductor that is attached to the back of your box. You'll need the big blue wirenuts for this. When your using linemans pliers to mechanically twist wire together, use very little force at first. Kind of let the wire slip through the plier heads. With each turn of the wrist, put more pressure on the bare copper wire that your trying to twist. You will eventually get all of the ends of wires to line up with each other and it will look like(and be) a really nice electrical connection. If you just really clamp down on all the wires at once and then twist really hard, wires will slip out and it'll look like shit and you'll have to do it over again. Sounds silly but there actually is a correct way to twist wires together. You'll figure it out.

Cut about a foot piece off of any left over 10/2 with ground romex and get the black and white conductors out of it. Put black pieces of tape around 4 white wires and then you should also have 4 black wires. Wire nut all the blacks together (including your incoming black lead from the timer box). Do the same with the white wires but make sure each white wire has a piece of black electrical tape around it.

Now you have 4 black wires, 4 white wires and 4 green wires inside your quad gang metal box.

Need I continue?

These are 240v receptacles. Put a black on one side and a white on the other and then a green on the grounding screw of the receptacle. Do that for all 4 receptacles, then find a metal box cover that will work with your receptacles. If there are any plastic round or square thing-a-ma-bobs holding the mounting screw for the receptacle in place, remove those. You want metal on metal contack with the yoke(strap) of the receptacle to the metal of the box.

The stuff I highlighted I still dont understand.

[Danknuggler]

Originally Posted by madpenguin

A quad gang box has AMPLE room. One 10/2 coming in with a total of 12 pig tails and 4 blue wirenuts .... Sure. It's going to be tight. That's why you stuff your wires to the back of the box. It won't be over cubed, I can almost guarantee that. Remeber grounds count as one and you will have no internal clamps.

Again you lost me here.over cubed?grounds count as 1 what?internal clamps what is that exactly?

[madpenguin]

Ugh.... Being Overcubed is an electrician's term which means you have too many wires inside a gang box. You are only allowed to put X amount of wires in any given gang box because of heat related issues. There needs to be surrounding air around the wires so they can dissipate heat, thereby not damage the individual conductor insulation.







Look at table 314.16(A). If I'm not mistaken (I very well could be), the last "device" box you see (4 x 2 1/8 x 2 1/8) is probably a handy box. Looks just like the 4 gang one I posted earlier only it accepts ONE device. A handy box is typically what you would masonry screw to your basement wall for a light switch or receptacle box.

So.... If we are going by those dimensions for just one gang, look to the right in that column and you can see what amount of wires in cubic inches it can hold safely, which is 14.5 in. If you even look further to the right, it flat out states that it can safely hold 5 #10awg conductors.

We are using a 4 gang box. The only dimension that has changed is the length of the box. Therefore we can safely say that we have 58 cubic inches to work with and we can have 20 #10awg conductors in there without being illegal.

Here are some rules when calculating box fill:

1.) Each device counts as 2 conductors
2.) All grounding wires just count as one conductor
3.) All internal clamps (ones that come with the box) count as one conductor

Ok. You want 4 6-30R's in there. That counts for 10. 2.5 cubic inches a piece. All ground wires count as one, so add another 2.5 cubic inches. Now we have a total of 12.5 cubic inches so far. We have no internal clamps because we will be using an external NM or set screw clamp so we don't have to worry about that.

Receptacles= 4x2.5 = 10 cubic inches
Grounds = 1x2.5 = 2.5 cubic inches
Incoming hot conductors= 2x2.5 = 5 cubic inches

Total box fill = 17.5 cubic inches

You've got 11 #10awg conductors there (2 incoming hot, 1 incoming ground and 8 hot pigtails). Look at table 314.16(B). Each #10 counts as 2.5 cubic inches.Pigtails and wirenuts do not count towards your box fill as per 314.16(B)(1).

Originally Posted by NEC 2008 Article 314.16(B)(1)

A conductor, no part of which leaves the box, shall not be counted.

I think that's pretty stupid because that 4 gang box is going to be really tight with all those pigtails, but.... whatever.

Even if we counted up ALL the conductors, incoming and internal only(pigtails), that leaves us with 27.5 cubic inches just for the wire. Add another 10 cubic inches for the receptacles and that gives us a grand total of 37.5 cubic inches. We are still good.

[madpenguin]

Originally Posted by Danknuggler

The stuff I highlighted I still dont understand.

Originally Posted by Madpenguin

Whatever few inch piece of copper is left from when you tightened down the grounding screw, take a pair of linemans pliers and mechanically twist all the grounds together. Then wirenut 4 of the above grounding pigtails to the bare copper conductor that is attached to the back of your box.

When ever you use a metal box, it MUST be grounded per 314.4 which I listed one post back. I told you to use MC cable. Use whatever you want. But if you use MC cable, your grounding conductor will not be bare copper but have a green sheath around it. You need to use that wire and ground it to the back of the box as soon as it enters the metal box. The only way you can do that is to strip off a piece of the green sheath so you can have bare copper on the metal box.

This is really all I could find on the internet: This is what your supposed to do with your incoming grounding conductor when using a metal box:


Now if you were using type MC cable, as per my example, inbetween the grounding screw that fastens to the box and where the cable enters the box, it would have a green sheath. After the grounding screw, you would strip the rest of the green sheath off and use the rest of that piece to pigtail to your 4 green sheathed gounding leads (the ones I posted earlier).

Originally Posted by Madpenguin

Cut about a foot piece off of any left over 10/2 with ground romex and get the black and white conductors out of it. Put black pieces of tape around 4 white wires and then you should also have 4 black wires. Wire nut all the blacks together (including your incoming black lead from the timer box). Do the same with the white wires but make sure each white wire has a piece of black electrical tape around it.

You need to make some pigtails.Plain and simple. Take a foot long piece of 10/2 romex and cut it in half. Remove the outer orange sheathing. You should have 2 white conductors, 2 black conductors and 2 bare copper conductors.

Do the same thing again with a new piece of 10/2 romex. Now you have 4 black conductors and 4 white conductors. Each piece is 6" long. Those are your pigtails. Those are what you will wirenut to your incoming feed for the metal box that will hold your receptacles. Wirenut all 4 black pigtails to the incoming hot black conductor. Each one of those 4 black pigtails will attach to one side of your 6-30R receptacles.

Do the same thing to the white conductors. Only put a piece of black tape around each one so as to identify them as hot conductors. Pigtail all the whites together with a large blue wirenut and connect each of the 4 pigtails to the other side of the receptacles.

This is all just basic wiring man. Go down to Lowes or home depot and buy one of those Black and Decker home wiring books. Read it. Books like that will teach you the basics. You need a basic understanding of general wiring practices before you go messing around with this stuff.

[Danknuggler]

Actually that was exactly what I needed MP.Perfect.Now I can do it no prob.There was a couple minor details about how to go about it in your first explanation that I couldnt wrap my brain around but no I got it all.Thanks alot!!!nuggler

[cocktail frank]

MP, i know the NEC like the back of my hand, thats my job.
im fully licensed, business permit and working.
i got a handful of guys that work for me, been doing this along time.

but i'll be honest w/ you.
you sound more like an EE than an "on the job" sparky IMO.
i'm still gonna stick w/ what i said.
he will have 1 240v single receptacle (being duplex are about as tough to get as a despod anymore) per pigtail.
no way he is gonna have a 30a draw on that.
only way it will happen, is if there is a dead short.
it will be for a millisecond, and top out at w/e AIC the branch circuit breaker has.
being most likely a residential joint, i'd say no more than 10k AIC.

that is pretty much the only thing i could see happening that would justify a draw over the 5a he will have plugged into it.
unless the OP does something crazy (like make a plug/box setup/ splitter) it will never be a problem imo.
just like the nema r-30's, redundant imo.

i'm not saying you dont know your shit, its apparent with your posts.
i could sit here and quote the nec, nfpa or my law books for you all day if you want,
i'm just trying to be practical.

[madpenguin]

It's not that I don't see your point. Yes, each receptacle will probably never see more than what the ballast draws nor will the pigtails that feed them. I'm most certainly not an electrical engineer. I'm a field residential electrician. The NEC is scripture and I take it very seriously. Why you don't is a little confusing to me. If your licensed and insured but advocate your said practices on your own jobs........ Man. Your a law suit waiting to happen.

If you use a 30A OCPD, you MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST use 30A rated cable the whole way along with 30A rated receptacles. Atleast if you want to stay 100% safe you "must".

Read my sig. I will not violate the NEC under any circumstance. Well, almost any circumstance. I have my lamp cords running through drywall that I then spackled up because I didn't want the extra heat in my room. Yep. That's a violation with flexible cord. I did it anyway. What I've done and what you propose are 2 completely different things and differ significantly in degree of danger posed.

It's up to the OP what he wants to use as far as wire guage. I'm stating what is required as a "minimum safety standard". I'm tired of saying that phrase because people just aren't getting that that's what the NEC is all about. It's a guideline for Minimum safety standards. When you don't even meet the minimum, wow.... your asking for trouble.

[madpenguin]

Originally Posted by overbudjet

Hi MADPENGUIN may i use s.s.r.(solid state relay )instead of using mecanical one for switching HPS.
In 120 volt i know i have to open the hot wire (black)but with 240v 2 hot wire do i need 2 s.s.r. ? S.S.R. will be rated at 40 amp at 240v. with cooler . i will drive 2 1000 watts ballast.

You got lost in the shuffle. Sorry. As long as it's a double pole and disconnects both hots when off, then sure. While killing one hot will turn off a 240v device, as well as some electricians around here saying that it doesn't matter if only one leg is dead, You will be in violation of the NEC unless both hot conductors are killed at the same time.

This is like people using single pole T-stats on 240v baseboard heaters. Extremely freaking stupid and a good way to kill someone while servicing said equipment. Yea, unless the t-stat can be locked in the "off" position, you can't technically consider it as a disconnecting means but a little common sense is called for. If you have a 240v device, what ever controls said device should kill both hot conductors for personal safety reasons.

Not too sure I'd trust thos SSR's anyway..... I think they are way more prone to failure than a mechanical one. That's just my opinion tho...