Question for electricians

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

I was talking to another electrician friend of mine and he told me code says 12 Gage and that I have to use solid all the way. Is this true? I kind of hope not because I used 15A breakers and 14AWG solid. If I HAVE to go to 12 and 20 it means I have to buy all new wire and all new breakers.

I was pretty sure none of the circuits in my house are 20A breakers, but I'll double check to be sure.

Is my friend correct though about 12 gauge??

Also I was reading on an electrical discussion forum and it came up that each outlet counts as one amp. Is THIS correct too? In that case, how do we run things that are more than one amp?? A single 400W lamp for example would be, what, 3.5 amps or thereabouts? A pump might well be more than 1 amp, no ??

Or is that just a case of averaging and predicting what a total draw on a circuit might be? Ie.,amps at the breaker with a 80% max load equates to a max of 12 outlets? But each outlet itself may be allowed to use more than 0.8A ???

14 gage solid is for 15amp, 12 is for 20 amp, but this is for solid core. a lot of places make you go to a lower gage when using stranded on longer runs. Outlets don't count as one amp you have to actually look at the purpose. there is actually a max number of outlets you can run on a breaker my book is still packed so I can't tell you exactly what it is though

**** I just did some reading that some juristictions require a min of 12 gage even for 15 amp, and it looks like Cow town might be one of them.. so that is something I would definatly check into***********

if you are doing your fish room figure out what exactly you are putting in for wattage requirements then split them up so each breaker is loaded no more than 1200 watts. what I did was put my two MH on different breakers and had one pump on each breaker, then I had another breaker for other pumps and heaters. each one was GFI protected separately. also remember you may have a problem if you are getting this inspected as outlets and switches have to be a minimum of 4 feet from water(might be off on the distance, but it is something like that) and I have heard one guy say the inspector wanted him to use outdoor fixtures due to the environment it was in. If you are getting it inspected, I would go to the city hall and say you are thinking about building a fish tank utility room and ask if there is anything special you should be aware of in regards to the code, also ask him about the stranded vs solid, cuz he is the one that signs off on it. the problem with not getting it inspected is if you have a fire starting in the fish room you will have no insurance, where if it is inspected even if it was started by the electrical stuff they have to cover you as it was to code.

Steve