hey guys new to the site but have been reading the forums for a while. i have a question for you fellow sparkys concerning something on a job that my company took over from a defunct elec company. first off, its all contactor controlled lighting. there are 4 120v lighting circuits, and 1 240v circuit for outdoor lighting which are on seperate contactors. there are 2 switches, one controlling the 120v and 1 controlling the 240v. there is also a photocell over ride for 2 night lights. one NL is a 120 and one is a 240. they have both NLs ran off the same photocell but am only picking up 200v at the 240v fixture. i thought they could have been back feeding on a nuet but after tracing and working it backwards towards the contactor i have found that it isnt. i usually would have time to fully investigate the matter, but the job is to be turned over by wednesday this week and have a lot of ground to make up b4 then. any help or insight is greatly appreciated. thanx guys
contactor problems
- Thread starter azslim
- Start date
- Status
- Location
- Chapel Hill, NC
- Occupation
- Retired Electrical Contractor
So that being said do you still have a problem. How accurate is your meter. 200v on a 208V system is not that far off but if your meter is off a bit you may not have an issue at all.
RETRAINDAILY
Senior Member
- Location
- PHX, arizona
so are the ballast wired 208v ? or 240v ?
Just curious,,,,are the two NL's in addition to the 4 & 1 lights mentioned?How are they controlling both 120 loads and 208v loads off of one photocell maybe bt switching thru just one each of the contactor contacts or are they hung directly on the photocell thru an interposing relay and not on a contactor at all?
Curious George is on the prowl again.
dick
Curious George is on the prowl again.
dick
sorry for the late response, been busy trying to finish out 2 seperate jobs this week. after taking some time out of my day to go down to the site and inspect the problems a lil deeper, as most of the info i have been going off of was from our jw on the job, i think i have the problems figured out. the gear is a 120/208 setup, and i believe that all the 208 heads on the poles are made up on the 240v tap instead of the 208. second, they were trying to control both the 120 NL and the 208 NL off of just the load lead from the photo cell. i believe now by just adding an additional contactor to run only the NLs and by rewiring the pole heads this should solve the issues. any input or info on this is greatly appreciated. thanx again guys
well, i guess there is a lot more screwed up w/ the lighting on this job than originally thought. got the contactor problem solved and the contactors controlling the 120v lights work like a charm, but the contactor controlling the 208 lights is still having some issues. my jw on the job says everything including the photocell controlled contactor is working properly, but the contactor controlling the 208v lighting is tripping the breaker. cant get back to the site til monday due to schedule, and job has been extended til tuesday now, so i was just looking for some clues to go off of before i get back out there. thanx guys
got it all taken care of today guys. turns out that the jw we had working on site, isnt much of a jw after all. he had all kinds of mistakes going on in the contactor enclosure. after a lil bit of looking around, i figured out he had some lines and loads switched up as well as his jumpers to the auxillary post were all mixed up. oh well, guess i needed to get out there anyways to get it taken care of. just hope now theres no other problems w/ any of his other work. thanx again guys for all the input.
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