Now I have seen everything.

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mkgrady

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Massachusetts
Went to a house to troubleshoot dead dining room and kitchen outlets. Could not believe what I found. The circuit began at a kitchen counter gfi. Downstream of the gfi it did half the counter outlets plus the built in microwave, the gas stove, a couple of kitchen wall outlets and finally ended at the last of four outlets in the dining room. Powering the microwave and stove on this circuit is a problem but not what this issue is about.

Not realizing there was a tripped gfi (I mistook the glowing light as not tripped) I plugged in a loud 120 volt bell and went to the panel to flip on some breakers. I thought I had found the problem when I turned on a 2 pole 20 because the bell started ringing. I assumed this breaker must be feeding a multiwire branch circuit even though it was labeled dining room heater. At that point I thought I was done but I checked the voltage and found 240 between hot and neutral. It smoked the microwave but the stove survived. The rest of the outlets had nothing plugged in.

Being really stumped as to why turning on the two pole breaker would apply 240 to 120 receptacles I removed the panel cover and found a 12-2 UF and traced the wire under the house. I could see that it went up into the dining room. I removed the nearest dining room outlet to see if that UF was connected to the outlet. It was. Black on the dark terminals and white on the light terminals. WHY WOULD ANYBODY DO THIS?

Of course I disconnect both ends of this cable and looked further as to why the outlets were dead. The kitchen counter gfi was tripped.
 
Did you turn the UF into a 120v circuit thus backfeed to a point where you can separate the loads better?
 
So a dining room receptacle that should have been dedicated for a 240 volt heater was double feeding a 120 volt circuit? Lovely.

Worst I have seen was in a hotel having a Nema 5-20 receptacle (208v) with a 6 - 20 plug with the ground pin cut off and inserted upside down. Not only does this ruin a $60 Factory cord on the PTAC units, and defeats the grounding, it puts 208 volts across a receptacle that is designed for 120.

I have also seen tandem or mini Breakers erroneously wired as multiwire Branch circuits when both poles are on the same leg... Fried neutrals anyone?
 
Coppersmith said:
Did you smoke the bell, as well? (Hey, that rhymes! :D)
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No the bell survived.

Craigv said:
I wanna know who's paying for the smoked microwave!
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It won’t be me. Not sure what the owner will think but I am working for a GC. He will pay me but he is worried about having to pay for the microwave

Coppersmith said:
I don't think it should be the OP. Doing something normal and getting an unusual result is not his fault.
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The part I left out was that the GC had already energized that 240 circuit so the microwave was fried before I started

Craigv said:
I agree completely. But it could be an interesting conversation!
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I sent the GC a report describing how wrong it is to wire something like this. He hopes the owner understands
 
mkgrady said:
No the bell survived.


It won’t be me. Not sure what the owner will think but I am working for a GC. He will pay me but he is worried about having to pay for the microwave


The part I left out was that the GC had already energized that 240 circuit so the microwave was fried before I started


I sent the GC a report describing how wrong it is to wire something like this. He hopes the owner understands
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Is the house new to the owner? Is the microwave a recent addition? I'm curious how this arrangement could have ever worked. I'm guessing they made toast in nothing flat!
 
JFletcher said:
So a dining room receptacle that should have been dedicated for a 240 volt heater was double feeding a 120 volt circuit? Lovely.

Worst I have seen was in a hotel having a Nema 5-20 receptacle (208v) with a 6 - 20 plug with the ground pin cut off and inserted upside down. Not only does this ruin a $60 Factory cord on the PTAC units, and defeats the grounding, it puts 208 volts across a receptacle that is designed for 120.

I have also seen tandem or mini Breakers erroneously wired as multiwire Branch circuits when both poles are on the same leg... Fried neutrals anyone?
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Very strange because there is no dining room heater. There is also no living room heater but there is a 2 pole breaker labeled such with a 12-2 UF cable connected to it?
 
Craigv said:
Is the house new to the owner? Is the microwave a recent addition? I'm curious how this arrangement could have ever worked. I'm guessing they made toast in nothing flat!
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I know nothing about the owner history. It looks like the UF cable was installed years ago. I’m wondering how many times that breaker has been turned on and how many microwave ovens have been replaced. Even if never I just can’t dream up a scenario that would have anybody wire the circuit(s) that way.
 
mkgrady said:
I know nothing about the owner history. It looks like the UF cable was installed years ago. I’m wondering how many times that breaker has been turned on and how many microwave ovens have been replaced. Even if never I just can’t dream up a scenario that would have anybody wire the circuit(s) that way.
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It's proof that nothing can ever be idiot proof.
 
It is possible that originally the dining room receptacles were switched, and the switched half was fed off of the other leg. At some point the receptacles were replaced, or the wiring changed in the switch box to create 240 volts across the receptacle.

In any case, it sounds like somebody forgot to remark a neutral as an ungrounded conductor. And it sounds like somebody forgot to lock out or unhook the wiring from that double pole breaker after the first microwave blew up . Or possibly they were supposed to make one of the dining room receptacles dedicated 240v, and forgot to unhook the original wiring.

Sounds like a proper cluster....
 
JFletcher said:
It is possible that originally the dining room receptacles were switched, and the switched half was fed off of the other leg. At some point the receptacles were replaced, or the wiring changed in the switch box to create 240 volts across the receptacle.

In any case, it sounds like somebody forgot to remark a neutral as an ungrounded conductor. And it sounds like somebody forgot to lock out or unhook the wiring from that double pole breaker after the first microwave blew up . Or possibly they were supposed to make one of the dining room receptacles dedicated 240v, and forgot to unhook the original wiring.

Sounds like a proper cluster....
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Yep, it looks like a typical homeowner-engineered "fix" to a problem they manufactured....it got cold, wife complained that she'd been asking hubby to install that heater since the winter of '84, so hubby puts down his beer, switches off the game, and hooks up the heater with whatever was in the garage.
 
Craigv said:
Yep, it looks like a typical homeowner-engineered "fix" to a problem they manufactured....it got cold, wife complained that she'd been asking hubby to install that heater since the winter of '84, so hubby puts down his beer, switches off the game, and hooks up the heater with whatever was in the garage.
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Yep. The UF cable is the biggest give away to DIY work.

Eta: almost forgot about a recent DIY installation I came across... a bathroom exhaust fan, no light, was fed from the switch box with 14/3. The bathroom circuit was a 20 amp circuit. The ground wire was not attached to anything, the white wire was tied in with the other switch box neutrals, the black wire was on one of the travelers from a three-way, and the red wire was connected to ground. The other traveler and the common of the three-way were not connected.

If you threw a three-way switch and 20 foot of wire into a running wood chipper, you would probably come out with a better installation than what they had.
 
JFletcher said:
Yep. The UF cable is the biggest give away to DIY work.
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Because UF cable would be required in this case I suspect someone that had an idea what they were doing did the work. A DIY person probably would have just run Romex. UF was required because the underside of the house is exposed to the elements. The house sits on concrete posts so as to let flood waters run under the house. I have no guess as to why 240 was connected to a circuit that required 120 and was already fed. I assume the UF was added some time after the House was wired. Otherwise they would not need to run under the house
 
JFletcher said:
Yep. The UF cable is the biggest give away to DIY work.

Eta: almost forgot about a recent DIY installation I came across... a bathroom exhaust fan, no light, was fed from the switch box with 14/3. The bathroom circuit was a 20 amp circuit. The ground wire was not attached to anything, the white wire was tied in with the other switch box neutrals, the black wire was on one of the travelers from a three-way, and the red wire was connected to ground. The other traveler and the common of the three-way were not connected.

If you threw a three-way switch and 20 foot of wire into a running wood chipper, you would probably come out with a better installation than what they had.
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I agree this seems like a total rookie just trying to make something happen. We all see this garbage all the time but what I had here just seems almost like they knew what they were doing. My best guess is some apprentice was told what to do and just misunderstood what he was supposed to do
 
mkgrady said:
I agree this seems like a total rookie just trying to make something happen. We all see this garbage all the time but what I had here just seems almost like they knew what they were doing. My best guess is some apprentice was told what to do and just misunderstood what he was supposed to do
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Well, my son-in-law could do this.
 
JFletcher said:
Yep. The UF cable is the biggest give away to DIY work.

Eta: almost forgot about a recent DIY installation I came across... a bathroom exhaust fan, no light, was fed from the switch box with 14/3. The bathroom circuit was a 20 amp circuit. The ground wire was not attached to anything, the white wire was tied in with the other switch box neutrals, the black wire was on one of the travelers from a three-way, and the red wire was connected to ground. The other traveler and the common of the three-way were not connected.

If you threw a three-way switch and 20 foot of wire into a running wood chipper, you would probably come out with a better installation than what they had.
Click to expand...

My favorite idiotic DIY job was actually probably committed by either the builder or a handyman the previous owner of a house I lived in years ago had used. We'll never know.

There was a whole house fan in the hallway ceiling. There was a whole house fan 2-speed switch in a bedroom wall nearby. The fan, however, didn't work. No matter how many times I flipped that little toggle. No big deal, as we had central air and used that most of the time.

But it bugged me, so up into attic I went one cool day. This was a two-speed fan. There was 14/2 NM running to it. Not a good start, but maybe they wired it for 1-speed only. Nope. Black to the high speed connection. White to the low.....and you guessed it, bare to the return...

Following this cable from its shameful start, I came upon not one, but two air splices. At least they gummed those up with now-drippy $1/roll tape. But still no clue where this rig was supposed to get power. It was a big house with a cavernous attic, so on I crawled.

My search halted as that NM-B dove into a Carlon blue round box down at the far end of the ceiling. Hmm, I guess the hall lights were powered here.

Wrong.

No juice. I gave this a momen's thought. I then called downstairs for someone to turn the fan on. My daughter did so. Nothing. I then asked her to turn on the hallway lights.

Eureka.....

Now, who sleeps with the hall lights on and the bedroom doors open????
 
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