another gen question

By bobbydrums66 Date 11-27-2007 14:41

my gen has a 4 wire twist loc I use a 3 wire for got where to run jumper to get 240 volts, Hooked it up in error and blew every thing on one side up, so how I fed 220 volts to 110 side, Costly error, Now do I run a jumper wire from X to Green my wires are Black, White and Green, Plug colors Yellow, X, White and Green, Do I wire as follows, Black -Yellow, White to white, Green to Green with a jumper to the X? First thing to go is my brain, LOL
Any way this was tried and somehow one side still got a tad to much and fried a Surge Protector, The gen had new diodes replaced a couple yrs ago due to the fact the breakers did not throw, Was running our home on it and the AC kicked on by the way this is a 5000 watt 9000 Watt Surge, so the diodes blew, Is it possiable one side of the 110 volts is putting to much out? Sure got me confused. I was a welder for 40 yrs retired in 1996 and We own a RV Park and I am still a oldies rocker drummer. 65 and still banging away.
Thank You Hope to this thing resolved
Bobby

By rlitman (***)

Date 11-27-2007 17:38

Well I'm not going to respond to your wiring question right now, but I need to say that the situation you described about running your home through the generator, and the AC then damaging the generator raised some big red flags for me.

-- Connecting the generator to your home, without a proper disconnect is illegal, and highly dangerous. --
In effect, your generator was back feeding power from your house, to the street, which energizes the otherwise dead power lines on the street, making for a very dangerous situation for any utility company linesman. It is very important to understand that the transformers on telephone poles (and any electrical transformer for that matter), operate in either direction.
That means that if the 7200V circuit supplying your neighborhood went dead during a blackout, your generator supplying power to your house, will feed back to the transformer on the pole a few houses down, which will step that back up to 7200V on the top wire. If a utility worker is injured due to this, your homeowners insurance will not cover any of your liability.

Back to your actual question:
What sort of "color" is "X"?
Do you understand that the 220V you can pull from a 3 wire will ONLY run 220V appliances (like a welder), but cannot be used to power your house (even if you have 220V feeding your main panel), because there is no neutral wire, so there is no safe way to derive 110V from that 3 wire cord without a transformer?

-- Robert

By bobbydrums66 Date 11-28-2007 00:51

I did not say there was no disconnect, There is one, We have ran our home on this generator for several days when we had the ice storm here in Indiana, Never once had any problems till I got it back from the dud that repaired it, Any way the rest of the story, The X is not a color, It is a O with a X inside the O, The jumper goes from the green to the X connect, There for I get 220 volts to our home, Then it splits to 2 110 Volts @ side, And 220 to Dryer, AC, Water Well Pump, Water Heater, I never had to use a transformer, 9000 watt surge was not enough to pull the AC, etc in our home, I have ran every thing in our home on a China made 3500 Watt Gen w/ 220 3 wire, Believe it or not it ran every thing, Except the AC, With ever thing powerd up, Hardly pulled the lil guy down, Matter of fact I sold them after the ice storm 70 to be exact, Buyers did not think they would run it, Till I showed them, This sold them, I should have kept a spare for a back up,
Now back to my gen problem, I called my friend a electrical contractor I had a lose wire to the disconnect, Now everthing is operating just fine,
I am not a genius but I do know better then to run power w/ out a disconnect, And if you do not agree this 220 volts will not run our home with no problems you better do some more research , Thanks For Your Input..

By DaveBoyer (*****)

Date 11-28-2007 04:43

Robert is tetnically corect about the 3 wire, HOWEVER the 4 wire plug is a relatively recent development. The neutral and ground wire are allowed to be connected at the source. The green wire should allso be connected to a copper clad ground rod driven into the earth. Older equipment [and Your China generator] uses the same prong on the plug for ground and neutral. Which wire is which in Your situation is for You to determine with a volt meter. There will be 220 volts across the 2 hot leads, and 110 from either hot lead to neutral or to ground if the ground is tied to the neutral. Modern electric services in many places DO NOT connect the ground and neutral buss bars in the box, but run a cable [usually #4] from EACH ONE to its own driven ground rod. If You have a poor connection on the neutral wire, when load is put on one 110 circut, the voltage on that side will go down, BUT THE VOLTAGE ON THE OTHER 110 CIRCUT WILL GO UP.