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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23/ ...and because the 220V outlets in my workshop (for tablesaw, bandsaw, and MIG welder) are all NEMA L6-30R twist lock outlets, that's the the Great 110 volt to 220 volt Twist Lock Adapter Storypic.twitter.com/xhynwlSIG9
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24/ Thank you for coming to my TED(f) talk
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25/ and I guess, moral of the story: never say neverpic.twitter.com/xOGbvPWo7W
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Replying to @MorlockP
This was an excellent bit of storytelling, from a technical standpoint. The way you walked the reader through the knowledge they needed in order to appreciate the story was very well done. Not too much, not too little, not too dry. Good work. The story itself was good, too. :)
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