Re: Power consumption

From: Harry Collins <bp100a_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Thu Oct 12 2000 - 09:30:42 EDT

Clay,

I'm not an electrician but I've read the BOCA books. I too have run 10 guage
for a 20a circuit (10gauge is rated to 30amps). The books tell you to set
the breaker for the wire size but run the wire for the "typically" loading.
You should only use 80% of the wires capacity "typically". Good examples of
this are refridgerators, which can consume a kilowatt. In that case a single
15a (14 gauge circuit) is required.

For my installation I have 16 games (2/3rds are raster). I'm figuring on
putting in a sub-panel and then running about 6, 20a circuitls (using 12/3
wire). I'll probably hang lighting off it also (about 400 watts of
flourescent should do). This should give me room for growth and using the
outlets for other things.

For outlets I'm going to use true 20a outlets. They have the funny little
horizontal tab on the right hand spade.

My biggest concern is the power spike when everything is turned on. From
what I've seen 4 games turned on at once will trip a 15a circuit. I was
planning on wiring up 2 duplex outlets per box with two circuits (hence the
12/3 wire). I might look into those "outlet strips" so I can spread out the
wiring.

I'm mounting in a basement to cinder block. This room will be "functional",
not pretty.

/harry

>From: "Clay Cowgill" <vector_clay@hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: vectorlist@synthcom.com
>To: vectorlist@synthcom.com
>Subject: Re: VECTOR: Power consumption
>Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 17:13:30 PDT
>
>>There
>>is a GOOD reason for 15 circuit breakers/fuses for house wiring, it is
>>often 14 gauge wire, and will run a bit hot at 20 amps, also the
>>connections for the wiring will be even hotter and this is the biggest
>>risk.
>
>When I wired an "equipment closet" in our house I ran a dedicated 20A
>breaker with 10 gauge wire. Turns out that 10 gauge wire doesn't fit
>"normal" wall receptacles, so I ended up buying some orange-colored
>hospital-grade ones. Looks cool, and is a handy way to remember it's a 20A
>service.
>
>One thing I noticed in my garage when I was blowing the 15A "garage"
>breaker
>with games was that the house was wired to that the "garage" service was
>also a couple light sockets, garage door opener, laundry room fan and
>light,
>etc. Probably ~3-4A of "parasitic" draw on the thing before I started
>plugging in games. I added another 15A wall-jack and could run ~14 rasters
>and vectors between the two 15A legs.
>
>-Clay
>
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Received on Thu Oct 12 09:43:59 2000

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