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You've got two hots and no neutral. I don't see how you're going to convert to 120 v circuits without that neutral wire (or two of them, if you want two circuits).
You could attach the red wire to the neutral bar in the load center, making it a neutral, giving you a single 120 v circuit with black-red. The breaker should be 15 A for 14 ga. wires, 20 amps for 12 ga wires. Anything heavier than 12 gauge can handle more current, but I don't know of 120 v receptacles rated for more than 20 amps.
If you can acutally pull new wires from the load center to the baseboard, then it's a whole new ball game in terms of what can be done.
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Thats correct, they will be used for outlets and lights, it will be all new 14/2 to the box except I will use the current 12/2 (black/red) for one half of the 15 amp breaker as it is allready ran pretty much too where I wanted it, will do as the professor suggested, use the red wire for common. I took the metal clip off that combined both switches on the breaker so they now run independantly. Thanks for help, just wanted to make sure there would be no problem with using the breakers. quote: Originally posted by frankvan:
I interpret what you wrote differently than what Professor did. I assume your new circuits will be going to outlets other than the present baseboard heater locations and that the present wires will be replaced with 14/2 with ground. Each of the present breakers could serve two circuits as single pole 15 amp ratings. I think I would replace the old breakers with single pole ones rather than have one breaker trip for a fault on either of two circuit faults. 2 SP breakers should fit in the space for the dp breakers. Sometimes DP breakers are used with 3 conductor wire to serve duplex receptacles where the white wire is connected to the common silver terminal and the red and black are connected to each of the two halves of the duplex receptacle with the common bus connection broken away. I hope that is understandable, and answers your question. Also you would need to replace the 20 amp breaker anyway with a 15 amp one or use 12/2 w/g for that 2-cct breaker. BTW welcome to AnswerPool.
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| Posts: 3 | Location: canada | Registered: 06-25-05 | |
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I guess I misunderstood. In my experience replacing or re-using circuit breakers is easy. Installing receptacles (outlets) where the heater used to be is also easy. The hard part is running new wires through the walls (or pulling through conduit) between the two locations.
Any way you figure it, two wires will only give you one circuit, whether 120 or 240 v, with no ground.
But if you're going to run new wires anyway, why not use 12/2+G instead of 14/2+G for receptacles & lights? I think 14 gauge is kind of wimpy by today's standards. The heavier gauge is safer, not much more expensive, and allows you to upgrade to 20A in the future.
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In this instance there is no problem with running wires, the baseboards I removed were in a unfinished basement and I am running 2 circuits out to a sunroom I am building, just got to drill thru a couple holes thru the top wall of my basement which is a 4ft knee wall. It will only be for 3 lights and 4 plugs, bit of an overkill using 2 ccts but I have the capacity. And I suppose 12 gauge would have been better but I already bought couple reels of 14/2 and 14/3. Cheers quote: Originally posted by Professor:
I guess I misunderstood. In my experience replacing or re-using circuit breakers is easy. Installing receptacles (outlets) where the heater used to be is also easy. The hard part is running new wires through the walls (or pulling through conduit) between the two locations.
Any way you figure it, two wires will only give you one circuit, whether 120 or 240 v, with no ground.
But if you're going to run new wires anyway, why not use 12/2+G instead of 14/2+G for receptacles & lights? I think 14 gauge is kind of wimpy by today's standards. The heavier gauge is safer, not much more expensive, and allows you to upgrade to 20A in the future.
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| Posts: 3 | Location: canada | Registered: 06-25-05 | |
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