convert 220 outlet to 110?

Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD

I found the place where the black/red is connected to the black/white. I went thru every junction on the lower level of my house (which took forever, since I was changing outlets and switches as I went) and did _not_ find it. Then I started thinking about how they could have done this after the house was built and it suddenly dawned on me that they'd almost certainly have had to go thru the crawl space. Sure enough, there it was, and really easy to access. Once I found it, it was a very simple mod. Now I have one outlet (that I'll probably rarely, if ever, use) that's on it's own dedicated circuit.

Thanks for all of the help. This forum has been extremely useful for me, and I've only been posting here for a few days...

rgsgww

You have a double pole breaker in there? Its safer.

theatretch85

If he is only using one 120 volt outlet then it is perfectly fine to be using a single pole breaker. Just cap the red wire in the panel and at the junction box, and cover the empty space in the panel with a blank cover or leave the other breaker in there as a filler and just not connect anything to it.

rgsgww

Yeah, I was assuming he was using the red wire aswell, and just broke the tab.

Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD

I detached the red wire from the breaker and am using it as the neutral. At both ends, I covered it with white electrical tape.

KE2KB

The double pole breaker comes in if you someday decide you want to run two circuits on that 3 wire cable. If the neutral is shared, the two circuits must use a double pole breaker, so that they're on opposite legs, keeping the current in the neutral below the rated value.

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KE2KB

Actually, I was thinking of getting a vanity call (not K2KGB though <g>), but decided I would wait until I get my extra class. That's something still in planning. At least now I don't have to take another (morse) code test<g>

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theatretch85

I thought you had a red, black and white wire exiting the panel and running to that junction box and a black and white wire exiting the junction box and going to the outlet location. I would have disconnected the red wire, and attached the white wire coming from the outlet to the white wire in the junction box going to the panel. Then just cap the red wire on both ends. This would have been the most preferred way of doing this.

Gigs

I still have my technician call even though I'm general. I'm non-operating lately though.

Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD

That's a good point. When I opened up the access point in the crawl space there were a bunch of wires in there, but only one white, and it was a heavier gauge (it seems to go with a heavy red/blue pair that's not being used for anything). There are some other access points in the crawl space, so maybe I'll try to track down that white wire when I get a chance. In any case, it works and I've got a lot of other problems to solve that are much higher priority than this (unless, that is, someone can convince me that it's crucial to know what happened to the mysterious missing neutral...).