Good Evening Gents,
First time poster, long time lurker here. A lot of you guys deserve a thank you and a pat on the back for helping me out a million times before. Thank you for that. I'm happy to finally join the board.
I'm wondering how many of you guys are familiar with the power layout of a ballroom/function space. Is it typical to have a ton of 30 amp, 5 prong (3 hots, 1 neutral, 1 ground), twist lock outlets along the walls of the function space for temp break out power? I took an in house job at a facility with a ton of ballrooms, meeting rooms, and other function spaces. In all of these spaces we have a ton of these outlets. They are fed with # 10's and land on 3P, 30A outlets.
I notice that every AV company that comes in to use our ballrooms all have corresponding cables that break out of the 30A twist locks and provide 3 20amp duplex receptacles via a "dog house" which has 20 amp fuses before the outlets. The facility I work for also has its own inventory of cables that break out of these outlets with 10/5 SOOW and hit a 4 square with a duplex receptacle (with the tab broken) and a single receptacle. These are make shift "dog houses" but without the 20 amp fuse protection. So essentially we tap out of the twist lock and have 3 dedicated circuits with a shared neutral.
I thought about changing out all the 30A 3P breakers to 20A 2P breakers, the 30A twist locks to 20A twist locks, and all the 30A twist lock male plugs to 20A twist lock male plugs on our cables so our 20A receptacles have 20A protection, but that would make our ballrooms incompatible with all of the outside AV equipment.
The obvious solution to our problem is to throw out our make shift set ups and buy actual 20 amp protected dog houses. Our set up is a little crazy, but I can see why our facility has been using these (make shift) set ups since the beginning of time (I think 20 years. Not sure, I'm new).
I guess what I'm asking is, before I call out these cables of ours, what codes are they in violation of? I see in 210 it clearly says a 30A circuit should have a 30A receptacle... but that is for branch circuits.. and I find it hard to consider these cables that are laid out for temporary power as a branch circuit.
3 things worth noting is, we pop out of the 20amp receptacle with a power strip that offers 15 amp over current protection. So the 20A receptacle is protected after the outlet though.... I've opened up many of these cables and have seen no evidence of overloading or over heating. At this point, I'm not condoning the use of these cables, I'm playing devils advocate (at the end of the day, this building has bigger problems that need to be rectified, but resolving this issue is next on my docket). And finally, our cables our only used for the smaller set ups that don't require an outside AV company. Think meeting set ups where a client needs a few circuits to plug a few dozen lap tops into the power strips.
I'm just trying to figure out how wrong this is in the eyes of other electricians. Thanks in advance.
First time poster, long time lurker here. A lot of you guys deserve a thank you and a pat on the back for helping me out a million times before. Thank you for that. I'm happy to finally join the board.
I'm wondering how many of you guys are familiar with the power layout of a ballroom/function space. Is it typical to have a ton of 30 amp, 5 prong (3 hots, 1 neutral, 1 ground), twist lock outlets along the walls of the function space for temp break out power? I took an in house job at a facility with a ton of ballrooms, meeting rooms, and other function spaces. In all of these spaces we have a ton of these outlets. They are fed with # 10's and land on 3P, 30A outlets.
I notice that every AV company that comes in to use our ballrooms all have corresponding cables that break out of the 30A twist locks and provide 3 20amp duplex receptacles via a "dog house" which has 20 amp fuses before the outlets. The facility I work for also has its own inventory of cables that break out of these outlets with 10/5 SOOW and hit a 4 square with a duplex receptacle (with the tab broken) and a single receptacle. These are make shift "dog houses" but without the 20 amp fuse protection. So essentially we tap out of the twist lock and have 3 dedicated circuits with a shared neutral.
I thought about changing out all the 30A 3P breakers to 20A 2P breakers, the 30A twist locks to 20A twist locks, and all the 30A twist lock male plugs to 20A twist lock male plugs on our cables so our 20A receptacles have 20A protection, but that would make our ballrooms incompatible with all of the outside AV equipment.
The obvious solution to our problem is to throw out our make shift set ups and buy actual 20 amp protected dog houses. Our set up is a little crazy, but I can see why our facility has been using these (make shift) set ups since the beginning of time (I think 20 years. Not sure, I'm new).
I guess what I'm asking is, before I call out these cables of ours, what codes are they in violation of? I see in 210 it clearly says a 30A circuit should have a 30A receptacle... but that is for branch circuits.. and I find it hard to consider these cables that are laid out for temporary power as a branch circuit.
3 things worth noting is, we pop out of the 20amp receptacle with a power strip that offers 15 amp over current protection. So the 20A receptacle is protected after the outlet though.... I've opened up many of these cables and have seen no evidence of overloading or over heating. At this point, I'm not condoning the use of these cables, I'm playing devils advocate (at the end of the day, this building has bigger problems that need to be rectified, but resolving this issue is next on my docket). And finally, our cables our only used for the smaller set ups that don't require an outside AV company. Think meeting set ups where a client needs a few circuits to plug a few dozen lap tops into the power strips.
I'm just trying to figure out how wrong this is in the eyes of other electricians. Thanks in advance.
