Hi Gang

My fuse panel is called a 'Federal Pioneer' and has two vertical rows of circuit breakers. There are 15 circuits in each row. The left row is a list of un-even numbered circuits: 1,3,5 etc. The right side is even numbered breakers.

When hooking up a repeater so that one connects the two phases, would you hook-up the two 'hot' wires to the two circuits on the same side of the panel, like 1 and 3 or does one hook-up one wire to the right hand side of the panel and the other one to the left hand side to connect the phase?

Is it important that the circuits one uses have nothing else, but the repeater on them?

I realize this is a touchy subject potentially, certainly wouldn't hold anyone to anything. If need be I'll get an electrician to install it. I am pretty handy though if given the right insruction.

Thank you, Glenn

Is your homeowners insurance paid up ?

It's not hard. I recently installed a coupler in my panel which sounds quite similar to yours.

The leg of each breaker alternates as you go down each side. What I did was to replace to 15A breakers on one side with two tandom 15A/15A breakers. The existing loads went to the first and fourth terminal on the tandum breakers leaving the two center terminals for the coupler.

Larry Fine helped me understand all of the details of the job and I'm sure he'll jump in and do here.

*BOINGGGG!* Somebody call?

Glenn, breakers no. 1 and 2 share the same phase, 3 and 4 do, 5 and 6 do, etc. They alternate phase as you go down the panel, A, B, A , B, etc. Therefore, (in a single-phase panel) breakers 1,5,9,13,etc. are the same phase, as are 2, 6, 10, 14, etc. A pair of opposing breakers (#1 & 2, for example) share the same lug on one bus (metal bar) in a panel.

Just for info's sake, in a 3-phase panel, 1and 2, 3 and 4, etc, also share the same respective phase. However, to find the same phase on one side, which go A, B, C, A, B, C, etc, you'd have to use breaker nos. 1, 7, 13, 19, etc., Why do they do this? Glad you asked!

They try to make it impossible to use the same phase more than once with a two- (or three-)pole breaker, because doing so would overload the neutral in a multi-wire circuit, and not provide differing potentials between (among) all hot wires.

A multi-pole breaker straddles the lugs of adjacent spaces, so a breaker installed anywhere in a panel will attach to one phase per breaker pole. A two-pole breaker hits both hot legs, and a three-phase breaker does likewise to all three hot legs in a three-phase panel.

By the way, in most instances, you can use a two-pole breaker in a three-phase panel to power a single-phase load. I won't go into the specifics here (unless someone asks), but suffice it to say that it's not a do-it-yourself task. In some services, one of the hot wires has a higher phase-to-neutral voltage than the others do (called the 'high leg').

Now that I've thoroughly confused you, the answer to your question is that any adjacent pair of poles is what you would use, just like any two-pole breaker in the panel does. You can do this, but I highly recommend hiring an electrician for the average user.

The proper way is to buy a new 15-amp, double-pole breaker, and after turning off the main breaker, place it in a new position in the panel, hooking the white wire(s) from the coupler to the neutral bus (look for most of the white wires), and one black coupler wire to each breaker terminal. (If there are 3 blacks, cap the unused one with a wire nut)

I noticed you have a Federal-Pioneer panel. I'm familiar with Federal-Pacific, which may or may not be the same. Are the breakers called "Stab-lok"? That's the Federal-Pacific name for them. You might have trouble finding that brand, as it's kinda outdated. Let me know if you do, I may be able to help you.

Larry in TN needed the tandem breakers he mentioned because his panel was full. (Boy, was it ever!) Generally, a full panel (when new) is a sign of poor planning. There should always be room for adding circuits, even if that means installing two panels.

A panel is limited to 40 circuits, and even panels with fewer spaces can be made to handle more circuits by using tandem breakers, which are two breakers that are either in half-size cases, or are two breakers in a single case.

One has to be extra careful to not place two circuits sharing a neutral on the same phase, which I mentioned a few hours ago in the beginning of this post. When using two-pole tandems, again it's imperative that the two poles stab onto separate phases.

Whew!

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com

This message was edited by Larry Fine on 06/21/02 18:58.16.

Good lord Larry, if you keep sending me posts like that I'm going to feel guilty for not paying you hourly to write them!

Really though, I appreciate the post, most useful, I might not even shock myself this time!

Yes the panel is a Federal Pioneer, it is made in Canada and it actually has 16 breakers per side. It does say 'Stab Lok' and the breakers seem to be a 'regular' size breaker. I have seen the mini ones and they are not that. The panel also says: '1 Phase-3 wire'I do have a couple free breakers as well.

Oh, and I do have my insurance paid up. I made sure of that BEFORE I got into home automation.

Thanks again, Glenn

Wow,

Do you have something that types this as you speak or do you do 80 or 90 words a minute. We need to archive these responses where folks can get at them easy. What a lot of work, let me be the first to nominate you for X10 support of the year, keep it up!

Bill
www.homeautomationnet.com

Larry, you mentioned the instance where one voltage is higher than the other two, (up here in Manitoba, we refer to that as a 4-wire delta, or farm light and power bank), 240 volts between phases, 208 between A phase and neutral, and 120 per leg between B phase to neutral and between C phase and neutral. This type of service still gives me fits when it becomes time to do a customer meter audit.
This is when that vector addition stuff becomes huge fun.

Oh, Ghoniba, the federal pioneer panel is the same as a pacific, and the both use those darned stab-loc breakers.

This message was edited by bent on 06/21/02 22:58.17.

Bent, in the US, it's the B-phase that is the high leg. The thing to remember is that the two 120v legs and the neutral are exactly the same as a standard 120/240v service.

This is used when the majority of the load is single phase 120/240v, as in most homes. The high leg is formed by a single additional transformer, which is why it's called open delta. With a mostly three-phase load, a full delta, using three transformers, is used.

The other three-phase system is known as a 'Y' system, and is called 120/208Y, or sometimes in non-residential applications, 277/480Y is used, as the higher voltage allows greater loads to be served by equipment with the same current rating.

'Y' systems are used where the majority of the load is single-phase, but has the advantages of three-phase, and has three hot wires sharing a single neutral.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com