a couple newb 240v questions here

erica_m

Hihi,

I'm in the middle of doing a kitchen remodel and had some really ugly furdown boxes between my old cabinets and the ceiling. My contractor pulled them down and lucky me, the original electrician decided to take a whole bunch of shortcuts rather than drill holes through the wall top plate. So amongst other stuff, I had a large 6awg wire going to my electric stove and the same going to my AC closet.

We decided to ditch the old wire as it was aluminum anyway and bought a suitable quantity of new copper 6 gauge 3 conductor wire to just replace both runs from the distribution panel. I have a main breaker for the whole house so it's safe enough to work in there.

The old wire said, it was 6awg 3 cond on the insulation, but what was inside was just the two hot and a stranded aluminum ground, no neutral (or perhaps vice versa that was neutral and no ground). The new wire of course has 2 hot, 1 neutral, and 1 ground.

So the old aluminum stranded ground (neutral whatever) was wired to ground inside the distribution panel, and to "white" on the oven, and the same on the AC.

So my question which I'm hoping one of you erudite folks can answer using small words is this, in the distribution panel, should I connect the neutral to the neutral bar, and the ground to the ground bundle, and if so, which of the two should I be connecting to the third leg of the two devices? There is no forth connection on those devices. The new wire is already pulled and ready to be connected up.

Any other gotchas, like does it matter which leg of the 240 is wired to the two halves of the circuit breakers? Is there a convention for which side is red and which is black?

Thanks ever so much

Erica