Saturday, April 12, 2014

More Power... Arrr, Arrr, Arrrrrrr

Yup... 220, 221. Whatever it takes. (Kudos to those of you who know where that line comes from.

It all started when my neighbor banged on my door at 8:00 a.m. this morning, ready to go. Normally Saturdays I catch up on a lot of the sleep I let get away from me during the prior week. But today I had to fly out of bed, grab some pants, and see who was making the racket. I knew already... just didn't expect him. This was going to be the day we did the work to allow me to switch my table saw from being powered up by this:

120V 15A Outlet (old)


to this:

240V 20A Outlet (new)


On the top is my original 120V, 15A shared outlet that I have been popping the circuit breaker with using for the table saw since forever. On the bottom is the new 240V, 20A dedicated outlet that the saw (and hopefully sometime in the future a bandsaw) will be using from now on.

We started by trying to figure out how to run the new line. It would have been nice if we could have run the wire in the wall, but with the new building codes that require fire break blocking between the studs it was no go. So I decided we would just run a conduit down on the outside of the wall. And it seems perfect for the circuit. I may not even paint it.

The worst part of the job was fishing a pull line from the ceiling down into the panel box. It was complicated because there wasn't much room in the box and the working space up in the ceiling crawl space was extremely limited. But we made it work with a minimal amount of foul language. Once that was done we were home free, and ready to confirm the materials list and head down to town to both Lowe's and Home Depot to pick up all the materials.

When the new circuit work was done we rewired the motor in my saw and installed a new power cord. It works great now! The real proof will come when I get my next chance to rip some 8/4 oak. No doubt it's going to be just fine.

Oh, yeah... and my neighbor? He is a licensed electrician. So I know all the work has been done correctly, safely, and perfectly to all the codes and requirements. It's really handy having great neighbors like him!



More power... arrr, arrr, arrr! :)

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