20 A laundry circuit

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nizak

Senior Member
How many here pull 2 circuits to feed the required 20A laundry circuit? I was trimming out a house today and happened to see the nameplates on the washer and dryer. The washer was 10.0A/120V and the gas dryer was 11.8A/120V. I have never taken the time in the past to look at the info because the units are never usually there yet when I finish. I have never had a callback where overload tripping was an issue, anybody here run into any issues with this? Is it possible that the newer units require more Amperage and this may just start to become a problem? Thanks.
 

Buck Parrish

Senior Member
Location
NC & IN
I too, have never had a problem with one circuit. 11 amps, that's a heavy duty motor.
I would have desighned it with a gear box so as a smaller motor would be adaquite
 

nizak

Senior Member
I'm curious, I just checked the nameplate on the two units I have at home they both say 10A. Will put my meter on the circuit and see what they really draw under load.
 

Dennis Alwon

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
Occupation
Retired Electrical Contractor
If I have a gas dryer I will usually wire it with 10/3 nm in case someone desires electric later. So yes I would have a separate circuit for the dryer. I also have one for the washer and another for ironing, etc if the space demands it.
 

sd4524

Senior Member
I have never pulled separate circuits and have never had a problem. Never had a service call for this problem either. I would be very interested to see what an amp clamp has to say about these 2 machines
 

Dennis Alwon

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
Occupation
Retired Electrical Contractor
I have never pulled separate circuits and have never had a problem. Never had a service call for this problem either. I would be very interested to see what an amp clamp has to say about these 2 machines

My guess is that both machine going would be less then 20 amps most of the time. A washer goes thru cycles and I bet it would take quite some time to trip at 23 amps., if it ever got that high.
 

mlnk

Senior Member
A typical washing machine uses about 4 amps. A large dryer, 6 amps. The machines you are working with are gigantic. I didn't know residential models could be that large. I also usually wire 20 amp cir. for the washer/ gas dryer and an extra 30 amp electric dryer plug. I do not think homeowners will like or understand the 240 circuit being converted to a 120 and/or back again. Time to run two 20 amp separate circuits for the laundry!
 

Electric-Light

Senior Member
A typical washing machine uses about 4 amps.

Many modern washers have various features, such as water temperature boost, steam treat, etc and uses resistive elements to perform these functions. My washer is one of those and it actually pulls around 10A.
 

drive1968

Senior Member
Last week I installed a dedicated circuit for a washer. The homeowner bought a new Kenmore large capacity front loader and the manual recommended that it have its own circuit. The nameplate said 10 amps, but after I installed the new circuit, I measured the actual amps being drawn. It only uses a peak of 2.5 amps and most of the time it spins at about 1 amp.

The new circuit turned out to be unnecessary. The gas dryer only uses about 5.0 amps, so the old circuit could have handled the entire load without a problem.
 

Electric-Light

Senior Member
Last week I installed a dedicated circuit for a washer. The homeowner bought a new Kenmore large capacity front loader and the manual recommended that it have its own circuit. The nameplate said 10 amps, but after I installed the new circuit, I measured the actual amps being drawn. It only uses a peak of 2.5 amps and most of the time it spins at about 1 amp.

The new circuit turned out to be unnecessary. The gas dryer only uses about 5.0 amps, so the old circuit could have handled the entire load without a problem.

I have one of those too. Mine has a VFD, so the spin-up rate is not determined just by momentum. It uses around 500W during acceleration and power factor is around 0.5, so that's around 8A. On a VFD controlled motor with program controlled ramp up, it won't require the same amount of power to spin up an empty drum.

It's also got heating element to boost water temperature during some cycles, which draws around 10A.
 
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