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Appreciation post for the old timer who taught me about load balancing
I was wiring up a new panel for a restaurant in town last Tuesday and this retired electrician walked by, about 70 years old, and just stopped to watch. He pointed out that I was bunching all the heavy draws on one leg of the panel, like the fryer and the AC unit. He said, "You're gonna have flickering lights and a hot neutral if you don't spread that load out." It hit me different because I'd always just followed the prints without thinking about the real-world balance. So I moved a few breakers around and sure enough, the amp draw evened out perfect. Has anyone else had a random older sparky drop knowledge on them like that?
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kim_davis14d agoMost Upvoted
Wait, did he actually grab a meter and show you the imbalance or was it just from eyeballing the breaker sizes? I'm curious because that's the part that gets me, knowing exactly when a neutral is gonna heat up just from looking at a list of loads. I had a similar thing with a journeyman who told me to always think of the neutral as the return path for imbalance, not just the white wire, and it totally changed how I look at a panel schedule. You ever run into a situation where the prints just don't account for what's actually cycling on and off, like a walk-in cooler kicking on right when the fryer is at full draw?
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tessalane14d ago
Does the math really hold up with all the phantom loads nobody accounts for though?
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