Adding more amps to room

[Guest]

hey guys, im looking to expand some more. I have a house I can use now. I dont want to be running extension cords all through it to get more power and want to be able to run it all from the same room. I went to home depot and they said for like $20 or something around there they can give me "instructions" how to do it myself. they have this do it yourself thing now apparently.

im not sure if i want to hire a real electrician to do it, i would have to clean up a ton of crap that would look suspicious. what exactly does it involve to add more amps to a room? debating wether or not to clean everything up and find an old friend whos an electrician to do it. or try to go with this home depot DIY guide.

 

[1TWISTEDTRUCKER]

Check out the diy guide,if you feel comfortable with your skills,then DIY.
This way no one knows anything.
This is a GOOD thing.
Good luck.

PEACE;1TT

 

[Guest]

There is a way to add more amperage capability to a room,but you must have a dedicated circuit which is a circuit straight from the panel to the receptacle.In short what you will do is replace the single pole breaker with a 2 pole of equal amperage,and put both black and white wires in the breaker.This requires room in the panel and some possible adjustment but is as simple as can be.This will double your amperage capabilities to that receptacle,all you are doing is changing a 120V circuit to a 240V circuit..Thats the only way I know of to increase load capability short of rewiring.

 

[Guest]

what DIY guide? http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=40637 that one? i cant find anything with the wiring in there. is there another DIY thread dedicated to it?

soilman thanks for the input, but unfortunately i dont know what any of that means =/

 

[Guest]

I'm sorry man sometimes I forget not everyone's an electrician lol.

 

[58FLH]

What if the wire gauge won't handle the load? What if the house was built during the aluminum wire days? Man I'd do some cleaning and get it done by a pro. Better safe than sorry.
grow safe
58FLH

 

[TGT]

Do you have a dryer plug? This plug is 220, and if you plug in a home made panel to this you can power 6 - 1000 watters usually. This is the easiest and cheapest route to go. The timer and plugs for the home made panel will cost about 80 bucks at home depot. The most expensive component will be the T-40 timer and the wiring (depending how far you need to go). If you like this idea let me know and I can help out with the way I did it. Good luck and hope this helps.

TGT

 

[ItsGrowTime]

I just bought and installed a prefab 30amp panel. Works like a charm. A bit overpriced ($250 from cheaphydroponics.com) but worth it since I didnt have to tear apart the outlet and there are built in breakers and a remote timer so timer failures wont screw things up too much. If you have the 3 prong dryer plug its great.

EDIT: Here's the panel. Remote trigger cable to the timer controls the lights.
http://www.n-g-w.com/detail.php?id=&prod=1664

 

[Guest]

I have the dryer plugs, but they are on the other side of the house near the garage. I want to avoid having cables running through the house

 

[hazeywonder]

What about a attic to run the lines through and drop them in the room, or a central ac on that side of the house? If you want to do it safe you should use the 220v line and some sort of subpanel/intermatic timer. They draw a lot of amps and like you said if you dont want to have a cord of all you other 15/20 amp circuits you need to drop in some power.

 

[Guest]

the room is right next to the AC in the house. Running it through the attic is a possibility. I was thinking about this earlier. I was wondering about that 30 amp panel thing. Would I run that from the 3 prong outlet dryer with a cord through the attic and then have that mounted on a wall in the room to use? or do i have the wrong idea here?

 

[ItsGrowTime]

You could probably just splice in a longer dryer cord and run it to wherever you want in the house. The dryer cord that comes with the panel is around 6 feet long and the trigger cable to the 120v timer is about the same. You would only need to address a longer power cord though.

 

[hazeywonder]

You have the right idea. You could do it a few ways, I don't know how it would look to have a dryer cord shoot in the attic so you might want to think about wiring it from the box and dropping the line down. Depending on the length of run your going to want to use a thick 8/10 gage wire. From there when you drop it in the room you have a few options.

If you just want to run the lights i would run them of the 220 on a intermatic timer. How many watts are you planning on running?

Or you could use a sub panel and split the 220 into two 120s and run most of your stuff of that.
The first thing you should do though is add up all the amps that your room use so you have an idea of use.
Either the sub pannel or the timer can both be had at home depot for about 60 bucks..

 

[Guest]

im only looking to do about 3x 1k watt HPS. and a 1400w AC unit, along with a few misc things like scrubber, fans etc.

 

[hazeywonder]

Well then your best bet is probably to drop in the 220 and run the lights 220 as well using the timer box. I'm not sure what a 1400w ac pulls but im sure its 120 so your still going to have to add it up to see if you can get away with just using the rooms lines for the rest of the stuff.

 

[imnotcrazy]

If the room has a DEDICATED 20A 120V line (it should if it's a newer house, code stipulates every bedroom needs a dedicated 20A line), you can convert the 120V line to 220V (this is what soilman was describing).

Basically plug in a light or some other appliance (alarm clock etc) and flip breakers until you find that particular circuit. If the room does have a dedicated 20A line, the easiest thing for you to do would be to open the panel, find the wire attached to that breaker and follow it to where it exits the panel. Where the breaker exits the panel there shoul be TWO other wires, one Green (ground) the other white (neutral).

You want to chase this Neutral leg back to the neutral bus in the panel and remove it from that bus. At this point you will need a 20A 2 pole breaker (you'll also need a blank space somewhere else in the panel, or a "piggyback" breaker to open the necessary space).

Remove the original, single pole 20A breaker and replace it with the new 2 pole 20A breaker. Wire the original hot leg to one of the poles and the neutral to the other pole.
When you turn on the breaker, the whole circuit originally 120V 20A is now 220V 20A and you have effectivly doubled your load capacity.

Next you'd want to convert ALL the outlets to 220V outlets so noone accidentally powers 120V appliances on this circuit.. Also you'd want to have Ballasts and A/C wired as 220V appliances.

Hope this helps, or at least helps you decide what you want to do.

BTW, a 20 amp circuit allows usage of ONLY 80%, or 16 Amps. That gives you:

120V * 16A = 1920 Watts OR 220V * 16A = 3520 Watts total allowable, continuous draw (continuous draw meaning an appliance on for 3hours or more per day) on a 20A circuit