Surface Mounting conduit receptacle box/cover plate

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AdrianWint

Senior Member
Location
Midlands, UK
Gents,

I need to install some US style receptacles in our UK factory to provide a way to test goods destined for your fair land.

I have located the receptacles that I want (combination 15A 120/240 outlets) on the Grainger website & they will ship to the UK, so that's no problem.

Where I am stuck is finding a suitable box/cover plate to use with them (and understanding your terminology for these items).

The box that I seek is for surface mounting a standard pattern dual hubbel receptacle onto a conduit system. I can find lots of boxes to recess the receptacle inside a plasterboard or masonry wall... but none to mount it on the surface of the wall. Perhaps I'm not looking for the right thing ......

We do have some boxes/cover plates from a project a few years ago ..... can any body identify these and where I might purchase some more?

http://i1274.photobucket.com/albums/y438/adrian41uk/USrecepConduitbox_zpse44a7200.jpg

If not, would anybody be good enough to supply a link to something similar?

Many thanks

Adrian
 
If it is surface mounted and does not need wet location issues then a standard 4" sq. box with a cover would work. Not sure what the receptacle looks like but it seems this would work


205922-20121004233820-thomas-and-betts-4-x-4-square-box.jpg


HES_902C.jpg
 
Grainger also has what Dennis posted.

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/RACO-Square-Box-Cover-5AA31


http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/RACO-Square-Box-5A052?cm_sp=EN-_-L2-_-MostPopular&cm_vc=FFMP


Cahttp://www.grainger.com/Grainger/RACO-Square-Box-Cover-5AA31n you post which receptacle you have in mind and we can verify if this will work with it?

From your description sounds like it is probably a "duplex" type of receptacle that likely fits this cover, but it could also possibly be a "decorator" style receptacle, or even something altogether different.
 
Gents,

Thanks for your comments so far .... here is another photo of the box with the lid off & a standard duplex Hubbell outlet installed ...

http://i1274.photobucket.com/albums/y438/adrian41uk/Dualoutletlidoff_zps419a4c44.jpg

The actual outlets that I want to install are these :-

http://i1274.photobucket.com/albums/y438/adrian41uk/combinationduplex_zpsafd04cd0.jpg

which I think will fit into the same box.

Thanks for the suggested box - they will be installed in a 'normal' workshop type environment so not special wet location etc is needed. Do you think that the boxes I have linked to where 'special' boxes, perhaps fabricated in the UK?

Thanks again.

Adrian
 
AdrianWint said:
Gents,

Thanks for your comments so far .... here is another photo of the box with the lid off & a standard duplex Hubbell outlet installed ...

http://i1274.photobucket.com/albums/y438/adrian41uk/Dualoutletlidoff_zps419a4c44.jpg

The actual outlets that I want to install are these :-

http://i1274.photobucket.com/albums/y438/adrian41uk/combinationduplex_zpsafd04cd0.jpg

which I think will fit into the same box.

Thanks for the suggested box - they will be installed in a 'normal' workshop type environment so not special wet location etc is needed. Do you think that the boxes I have linked to where 'special' boxes, perhaps fabricated in the UK?

Thanks again.

Adrian
Click to expand...

Though the receptacle you wish to use is not all that commonly seen here, the "duplex" frame is very common, probably about the most common receptacle body found here. There are many possibilities for boxes and covers, but the 4 inch square shown earlier and associated cover is likely to be about the best for your application. The next question may be what kind of wiring method will you use and whether or not it will be easy to enter this box with. This box has punchout type openings for cable/raceway entries - typically in the 1/2 in trade size, actual size of hole is about 7/8 inch or about 22 mm.
 
Just a question, are you 50 or 60 cycle there? I only ask because we had the same issues here when shipping to Europe and we had both 50 and 60 cycle in the plant, but we made sure that we distinctly identified the two. We simply painted the faceplates and panel covers of all of the 50 cycle yellow.
 
Bear in mind that the pre-punched holes in the boxes are sized to pass either 1/2" or 3/4" pipe. One would normally use some sort of connector to attach the cable to the box.

We would also, nearly always, attach a grounding wire to the box- there's a pre-punched hole for that purpose. I'll try to dummy something up tonight, and post the pics.
 
PetrosA said:
I would be happy to come over this weekend and wire it up for you, if you don't mind covering the air fare :)
Click to expand...

Lol..... I've been trying to persuade my Master to let me come across the pond for "educational" purposes so that I can find out the correct answers first hand :)

I don't think that's gonna work either :weeping:

Adrian
 
cowboyjwc said:
Just a question, are you 50 or 60 cycle there? I only ask because we had the same issues here when shipping to Europe and we had both 50 and 60 cycle in the plant, but we made sure that we distinctly identified the two. We simply painted the faceplates and panel covers of all of the 50 cycle yellow.
Click to expand...


The UK is indeed a 50Hz country. We already own a 30kVA static frequency converter that will change out native 400V 3 phase 50Hz to 400V 3 phase 60Hz. I've commissioned a custom transformer that has multiple tapping on the secondary side that will allow me to recreate most of the worlds common supply voltages. I intend to run this transformer as a delta/Star.

For the US system, I intend to configure the transformer as high leg delta secondary so that I can have 120/208/240 available simultaneously. Some of our products will work just fine at any of these voltages (they have a switch mode power supply in them). Others are intended to work on a nominal 230V supply ..... so I need a convenient way to test then at 208V and at 240V.

Adrian
 
renosteinke said:
Bear in mind that the pre-punched holes in the boxes are sized to pass either 1/2" or 3/4" pipe. One would normally use some sort of connector to attach the cable to the box.

We would also, nearly always, attach a grounding wire to the box- there's a pre-punched hole for that purpose. I'll try to dummy something up tonight, and post the pics.
Click to expand...

Our nearest standard size conduit would be M20 (20mm). The normal way to connect would be using a coupler & a male bushing so I think this would work just fine using a 1/2" hole.

We too would ground the box (as well as connecting the ground wire to the ground terminal on the receptacle) so that's all good.

The only thing I need to look at now is RCD (GFCI in your terminology). A UK device should still work just fine, but I suspect that its self test function would not work correctly since the test resistor would have been calculated using 230V (L-N) instead of 120V (L-N).

Adrian
 
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