14/ ...except...my wood heat is from an exterior box outside the house which uses electrical power to turn a fan to feed air. And then water is pushed through a pipe by a pump to move that heat into the house. So, I need electricity.
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15/ I've got a dinky consumer grade 110V generator, I've got gasoline. No problem. I don't have a "transfer switch" installed yet, so ok, small problem. I head to workshop and - working by candle light, wire up an illegal double-ended plug. Flip master breaker >
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16/ ...to disconnect house from utilities, lest any of my ghetto home-brew electricity back flow out to the pole and harm a lineman. Plug my double ended male into generator and outlet. Voila!
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17/ Except... remember how houses have A power and B power? Which bus bar am I feeding? Well, whichever one is connected to the outlet in the workshop I'm back feeding to. Let's call that "A".
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18/ so ONE bus bar in my breaker box is now energized. Good news, that's the one that feeds the outdoor boiler. The boiler turns on and starts blowing air. ...but no hot water is moving from boiler to house. Why? Investigate.
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19/ ...ah! The pump that moves hot water is on the "B" bus bar. And so are half the pumps that move hot water around inside the house (other half are on "A"). So I need to energize both A and B bus bars. GAH
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20/ So, remember how I talked about 220V breakers spanning both A and B bus bar? First I flip all of those off. No electric dryer or well pump. Next: how am I going to feed both busbars from the workshop garage? I could cobble TWO suicide plugs, and find one A outlet & one B
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21/ ...but...remember what I said about 220V outlets? They connect to both A and B busbars. Aha! So, working by candle light, I build a SECOND suicide cable, cannabalizing parts from my tablesaw plug. This one takes 110V from generator and puts it on BOTH A and B lines of 220
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22/ ...so now both A and B busbars are energized at 110V vs ground (as they should be) but are 0° out of phase (and not 180° out of phase, as they should be). I plug this in, start the generator ...and heat and lights come back on.
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Replying to @MorlockP
this reminds me of Less amazing but still interesting thing that happened in my college dorm. they wired all the outlets with a common ground that went all the way back to the main panel. some outlets were on leg a and some on leg b of 220 hookup.
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Explains how an entire floor of my (then) office building was accidentally wired to 220v overnight. Computer power supplies were blowing up that morning.
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