Converting a 240v Outlet to 120v

Inspector507 · Jul 6, 2002

FPE had their UL listing pulled many years ago because they would not trip under a fault condition and were responsible for many a fire. And the only way they would reliably stay stabbed into the buss was to leave the cover on the panel. I do think someone is still producing them now though.

MikePA · Jul 6, 2002

What make of breakers do you have?

They're GTE-Sylvania.

I did most of the wiring on the second floor of our 100+ year old house. Each room had one outlet at the doorway. Right above the outlet was a pull chain light. One heat register for the entire upstairs. So, I installed additional outlets, as well as baseboard electric heat, in each room. So, I'm familiar with 12/2 WG, 14/2 WG and 10/3 WG as well as installing new circuits in the breaker box while holding a flashlight in my mouth /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif Of course, that was when I was younger and 'stoopider' /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif.

Inspector507 · Jul 6, 2002

Sylvania may be obsolete, but there are numerous other brands that will fit.

EdKing · Jul 6, 2002

Mike, how many prongs were on the air conditioner plug, 3 or 4? If there are 3, there will be 2 hot lines and a ground for the return. If there are 4 you will have 2 hot lines, a neutral, and a ground. While you can just use one side of the 220 breaker, I wouldn't recomend it. The breaker may not trip in time and the wires or appliance could burn up and start a fire. If the insurance company finds this they may not pay on a claim. I may take chances with other equiptment, but I have worked around electricity enough and seen what it will do when misused, that I lean toward the play it extra safe with my house wiring.

chim · Jul 7, 2002

I've seen a few Zinsco panels, but the one that took the cake was one at a garden center years ago. The owner wanted to get ready for rose bush selling season, and was setting up a couple of those plastic quonset hut affairs. He wanted to do a temporary lighting job via "carnival lights" - pigtails on a pair of wires. He took me to look at a panel he planned to use, and it was a Zinsco. I pulled the cover, and saw that almost all the branch circuits had been disconnected. Whoever disconnected the circuits did so by cutting the wires off about an inch away from the breakers. When I looked closer, I noticed there were no screws on the breakers for attaching wires. Scratched my head for a while, then noticed a small red button on each breaker. When you pushed the buttom, the breaker released the little stubs of wire. Wow...........chim

bgott · Jul 7, 2002

We have an Ace Hardware here in Houston that has a back room full of new and used obsolete breakers. I found a Cutler- Hammer from the '50s or early '60s there. Nobody else had ever seen one of these.

MikePA · Jul 7, 2002

Mike, how many prongs were on the air conditioner plug, 3 or 4?

It's a 3 prong outlet.

EdKing · Jul 7, 2002

It's a 3 prong outlet. 

What I would do is remove the 220 breaker and take it with me to get a 110 breaker. While they may not make that brand/style, there may be another brand/style that is the same. If you can't find a 110 breaker to replace the 220 one, then you can check the other 110 breakers in your box, find a 20a that has the least circuits on it, and conect the black wire that was attached to the 220 breaker to it, then attach the white wire that was attached to the 220 breaker to the bus bar in the breaker box that has the other white wires attached to it. Then replace the 220 recpticle with a standard 110 recepticle.

Inspector507 · Jul 7, 2002

Ed,
Just wondering...........why would a 2-pole breaker not trip in the same time frame that a single pole would?
Seems to me that a 20A will trip at 20A.

centex · Jul 7, 2002

If a breaker cannot be found then the levers on most of the 2-pole breakers that I am familiar with are usually connected with a pin that could be removed to convert the breaker into two 2-pole breakers. On the other hand I don't see why you could not just leave them connected and just use one pole of the existing breaker. The problem that I see with this is that the AC circuit was probably 20 or 30 amps and it is not good practice to put a 15A outlet on a circuit protected for more current as the outlet could be overloaded without tripping the breaker. This could result in a fire and insurance would not cover it because of the non-code wiring. If the breaker is 20A then a matching 110V outlet could be used but if it is 30A outlets are available but are expensive and require special plugs which are also expensive. Also if the wiring is aluminum you have to use special wirenuts (read expensive and hard to find although Home Depot in this area finally started carrying them in one size only) to splice on copper pigtails to the aluminum wire because aluminum compatible fixtures are no longer available.