need an electrician for ? on running 240v

? Lol. the only two that are off are the same size. The very top left (dryer) and the middle right (heater) the dryer one was off when I moved in

Here's a slightly better pic.

The smaller one (above) is for the lights and plugs. It is on tho.

if thats the case then, you only have 240v at the heater. what concerns me tho is @ the heater itself, there were 5 wires, one group of black, white, and ground, and a separate pair of one black, and one white.
its that separate pair of wires im curious about. do you know what it connects to?

follow the 2 wires that are connected to the breaker right up to where they come out of the outer jacket, close to the top of the electrical panel. is there also 5 wires there?

I know man, I have NO idea. The lines were all connected to the heater and all went dead when I kicked the breaker over????? Gaaaahhhhh! Lol

The only thing in the box I see that resembles The two "extra" wires (the larger ones). Are the ones running from the dryer and the range. Neither of which are even remotely close to the room itself. Fkin confusing

And the wiring on the heater was kinda odd too. There is two lines (red and black. That hook to the bottom to power the elements then a (looks like 2) wire cord running from behin the thermostat dial to the fan motor. Then a screw for the ground. The wires from the wall were all wired between the two main wires then the ground on the bolt. I hope that made sense

And it looks like the two smaller wires ran to one line and the two biggers ran to the other. That doesn't even seem right though does it? Am I living in a fire waiting to happen?

ok... well it looks like what you have going on, is one 20 amp 240v circuit feeding some baseboard heaters.
which is going to leave you with only 240v dedicated outlets. not as good as having both 120v and 240v, but since your lights will run better on the 240v, what you need to do is just get a 240v outlet (or 2 of them if you have lots of lights) and make sure the existing wires are connected good and tight. if you plan on having 2 240v outlets, make sure you use wirenuts and make jumpers to feed each outlet from the existing wiring, instead of trying to hook the existing wiring up to both outlets dorectly.

Here's a pic of the heater

the way the heater should have been hooked up would be like this-
on the existing wiring, the 2 blacks would have connected to the black on the heater.
the 2 whites on the existing wiring should have been connected to the red wire on the heater.
the 2 grounds on the existing wiring should have been hooked to the screw on the heater.

the reason one wire is bigger than the other is that the bigger wire is the 'homerun' or rqather, the wire that runs to the panel. the smaller wire, or branch circuit is going out to another heater. since the 'homerun' is carrying power for more than one heater, it has to be bigger to handle the additional amperage. since the smaller wire is only supplying power for one heater it can be of a smaller diameter as there is less power traveling through the line, so no, its not a fire trap

ex-
...........vhomerun............................v branch circuit
panel==========first heater-----------------------last heater

so what you want to do is make it like this-

..........homerun............................branch circuit
panel==========240v outlet---------------------last heater

So then... Which wires do I use? Lol, the thicker guage I'm assuming is the 240 but this extra set of wires is freakin me out lol

the extra set is the outgoing wiring. it goes to the rest of the heaters in the house. you can either abondon them altogether (by abandon i mean cap them off with wirenuts and not connect them to anything) or keep them connected to the circuit so that the other heaters still have power going to them.

No, each heater has its own breaker. The bottom 3( biggest) on the right column are each for their own heater. Fuckin wack or what? Lol

that is very whack..... that 150$ electrician might be a good option, lol... not that i cant help you, its just hard for me to give you any advice with certainity over the internet, if you know what i mean. if i was there, this would be alot easier. to you have access to a multimeter? or at least a voltmeter or an ohmmeter?

I have no problem picking one up. Which would be best? I'm guessing a VOLTmeter haha. Think before I speak. As for the help. I appreciate all you've done. If you lived close I'd feel inclined to buy ya a beer at the least I can't describe how thankful I am for all the help and patience you had with my noobishness. I'm a hardcore diy'r and I'd just as soon spend that 150 on tools and supplies to do it myself if possible and when possible, I was all geared to go then I discovered the 5th wire lol

sensisensai said:

Alright. Ill try to keep this short and simple. First, I have some knowledge of household electrical but will not be attempting this myself but I'm confident that with the help of a friend I can save myself some money (safely). So here's the deal. The house I am in I am renting so my switch needs to be as temporary as possible while still being convenient.
We have those pesky in wall heaters that consume power non stop. They have they're own dedicated line from the breaker that is 240v as well the laundry room has a 240v dryer plug in it. So I have 2 options the way I see it. I can A) run an extension cord from the dryer outlet to the room and run my 1000w that way but that would require a good 50ft 240v extension cord which is no good in terms of amp drop right? or B) I can disconnect the heaters as they're not used anyway and run a line from the box to the room. This set-up would be more practical as I plant to eventually put a powerboard in there with 4x 600w and c02. Problem is I can't find ANYTHING online for converting a 120v outlet into 240v other than transformers most of which only handle 500w anyway and I don't wanna do that to my ballast. Can someone offer me some guidance? I will post pics if neccesarry

Click to expand...

You have space in your panel so get a 2 pull 20 amp breaker. run a new line. You will need to run a common if you are running the line to a timer.

lol what you really need is a cheap multimeter, one that reads voltage and resistance/continuity.
what you need to do is determine what that second pair of wires is going to. using the resistance/continuity feature of the multimeter, you will have to make sure the breaker is off, then check for continuity between the black and white wires on the bigger pair. there should be nothing there at all. then check the smaller pair. if theres any resistance/continuity on the second pair of wires, that means there probably connected to something else in the house... what that is, lol could be anyones guess at this point.
after that, you need to test for voltage, to make sure everything is right. thats when you have to take a chance, and work with the wires 'hot'. all you have to do, is turn the breaker on, and test the voltage on the larger set of wires. it should be somewhere around 220-240v. then check the smaller pair of wires, there should be nothing on it for voltage. then check between eachwire and the bare ground. on each of the larger black and white wires, you should read 120v to ground. on the smaller pair of wires, there should be no voltage at all to ground. if anyone of those readings are off, then theres something really weird going on. what you want, and need to have, is voltage on the larger sewt of wires only, 240v between blk and white, and 120v between either black and ground, or white and ground. the smaller wire should have nothing on it but resistance. if thats the case, it means that you have good voltage coming in to the heater. the resistance on the smaller pair of wires will indicate that there is something else in the house that is picking up power from that circuit. if you decide to leave those wires abandoned, if its something important it shouldnt take you long to notice what it is, and then you can hook them back up to the circuit later on if you decide you need to.

Ok. So I went in the bedroom next to the grow room and it turns out that that heater doesn't work either now. So they're obviously connected so this mean that those smaller wires are just a piggy back to get power to the other heater? If so why would the ground be on THAT group of wires not the thicker guage (presumeably coming from the main panel)? And shouldn't the guage be the same as the hot lines in? I almost am afraid to see how the rest of the house looks and am wondering how/when it passed code lol.