Panel says "for computers only"

[zappy]

I wanted to get 240v. for a compressor for a dental office. Only panel with spaces says this on it. Whats the reason? Isolated ground or something? Thank you for your help.

 

[Bigrig]

Possibly, or to prevent noise from interfering with the computers.

 

[iwire]

The reason is the last thing they want is someone to add a load like a compressor onto the panel. :grin:

Generally, but not always these panels are supplied by a dedicated transformer and / or a UPS and the idea is to supply stable power to the electronic loads. It is likely to have an isolated ground but again may not.

 

[realolman]

I wanted to get 240v. for a compressor for a dental office. Only panel with spaces says this on it. Whats the reason?

To try to keep guys like you from doing what you want to do.

 

[satcom]

Can you imagine if that is like my dentist office, a ups panel for limited loads, and someone comes along and loads it up.

 

[MichaelGP3]

I am both happy & sad that you asked the question. What are you going to do?

 

[growler]

Whats the reason?

You will have to figure that one out for yourself, there are several possible reasons as you can see but it may be nothing more than they tried to seperate critical circuits to keep anyone from turning the breakers off. A lot of places use the breakers to turn lighting on and off and it's always a problem to make sure the wrong things don't get turned off.

It sounds as if you are going to have to set a sub panel for the compressor powered from a different panel. While you are there look at the system and see if you can figure out anything special about this computer panel. Consider it part of your education. That's how you learn, by seeing new things and asking questions.

You can get a lot of opinions but you won't know for sure why they marked this panel the way they did until you see for yourself.

 

[charlie b]

I suspect (given that you did not mention this) that the marking was done in such a way as to make it probable that the manufacturer was not the one who put it there. That tells me the owner, or a representative of the owner, wrote that on the panel. So that is the place to go to get your answer. People often put up signs, and don't bother to take them down when the sign no longer applies. Perhaps this is one of those cases.

 

[hillbilly1]

Yes, it could be a dedicated panel for the computers to reduce interference, or the panel could be fed by a UPS unit. If it is the latter, the owner will be real upset when you fry his UPS, and shut down all of his computers! I had a competitor who under bid me on a fire pump install on an orange box, as anyone who has worked on one of those stores knows that most of the panels are controlled by energy management, and automatically shut off at night. I knew that I would have to run the feed for the jockey pump all the way back to the electrical room about 500' away. My competitor did not, he ran it to the closest panel about 30' away which was on a contactor. About midnite the fire pump would start because the jockey pump lost power at 10:00, the sprinkler system had leaks and would loose pressure. After he figured out why it was doing it, he begrudgingly ran the feed to the electric room where he promptly installed the circuit in the computer panel which had plenty of spares. When the pump started, the 6 kva ups didn't like it a bit. Neither did the store manager.