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Can someone help me tell the difference between a 110 & 220 volt circuit?
Ok this may be tricky so follow me here. We had an electrician put in separate circuits 220's 110's some we never used. We have a wall heater it is a 110, but the circuit it is on may have been wired for 220 also in case we wanted to get a 220 heater in the future. I don't remember if this wall heater wire was just 110 since we didn't need a 220 at the time. Because we ran out of room in the breaker box so some 220's were not done and just kept 110's.
See now the wall heater broke so we need a new one. I would like to have it replaced with a 220v model. With the heater broken I cant go flip breakers until I find the right one when the heater shuts off. I don't have a tester.
I want to avoid having the electrician come out twice once to check the 110/220 situation and second to install it. That's why I am asking here. Thanks for any help everyone. Hope I wasn't too confusing. Tymmmuokjgkg
I should have mentioned it is a hard wired heater, so I cant really look at the plug. Maybe I need to take the heater off the wall to see the wires. I dont really want to do that though.
The heater is wired for 110 now. What I want to figure out is if it has been set up for 220 also where the extra wire can be connected to make this 110 a 220. Its just with the heater dead I cant go flipping breakers. I could tell if it was a double or single breaker. But the problem with that is we have a circuit we never used.
Well I could just flip them all off and just count the unused breaker in the nonworking ones and if all are 220's or there is a 110 in there then I can know that way. Hmmm I may have this figured out. Sorry for wasting anyones time. I will try this later and see if this works.
I couldnt really google this question since the details are a little long. I dont think many peple have their circuits wired like this.
6 Answers
- clcprodigyLv 61 decade agoFavorite Answer
It is easy to tell a 220/240 amp outlet from a 110/120 amp outlet the 240 will usually have only one socket. It is also much larger sometimes even the plug is different shaped. If you have a large appliance outlet you will know just by looking. Now the problem you may have is if the the wall heater has a different kind of plug. Unlike 110/120 amp where all plugs will go in, in 220/240 amp the plugs come in different styles. In all cases change the outlet, not the plug on the heater. If your outlet looks like an ordinary outlet it's for 110 amp. Good Luck. Just looked up no you can't have a 110 and 220 on the same circuit. Or at least it would be hard for me to believe anyone in their right mind would leave two hot wires from a double poled circuit breaker loose, something I've never seen done, but it would require electrical work in any case. Just coming back with what if, they left the one double poled set of wires disconnected I guess that would work 110, but would still require electrical work.
- John BlackLv 41 decade ago
Ok, this is pretty serious. Running a 110 appliance on a 220 circuit will not only break the appliance but you are risking getting electrocuted. You shouldn't do ANYTHING until you get a licensed electrician out there. 220 can kill you. I often suggest people remain confident about handling some aspects of home repair themself, and electrical is the one thing you just leave to the professionals. Because even they get shocked so you can really mess up easily. If you knew the spot in the breaker box where the wall heater was going to (it could be isolated from the other working circuits through process of elimination or by associating the heater's circuit with another outlet or appliance that shares the circuit) you could get a pretty accurate idea of the voltage of the appliance' circuit by the size/quantity of breakers at that site. For example a 110 appliance may have a double15 or 25 amp breaker whereas a 220 may have from a double 30 to a double 45. (double meaning two posts side by side held together with a little piece of metal or a solid plastic double wide piece) the breaker should reflect the voltage of the appliance and corresponding circuit, but this is not the best way.
Source(s): if you were going to do it yourself the first thing to do would be buy a voltmeter, then study wiring for a while, and only when you really understood everything then go find out what's going on with the circuits and act accordingly. I just don't recommend it because I just want people to be safe. - ?Lv 41 decade ago
If you had a 110 (also known as a 115/120 volt) heater plugged in that outlet before then it's sure to be wired as a 110. A 220 outlet would have immediately burn up any heater for a 110, but you would not have been able to plug it in in the first place because a 220 outlet & plug on any and all appliances is much different and bigger and will not work with any 110 plug & outlet. If the electrician did wire it for future use as a 220 he left one wire disconnected either at the breaker panel and/or in the outlet box behind the outlet and safetly capped so it remains a 110 for now. 110/115/120 uses one hot wire, a neutral wire, & a ground wire, 220 uses two hot wires and a ground, leaving one hot wire disconnected leaves you with 110 only.
- Anonymous5 years ago
110 volts isn't more efficient. Take a 2000 watt kettle for heating water. At 110 volts it would take 18.18 Amps. At 220 volts it would take 9.09 Amps. If they both had the same sort of wire feeding the socket, which one could give more power out? If the wire could handle 20 amps, the outlet could handle 4400 watts at 220 volts and 2200 watts at 110 volts. In the American system, you would have to touch both live wires of a 220 volt outlet to get 220 volts across you. This is because the 220 volt line is really 110 volts either side of neutral which is normally earthed. If you only touch one side and earth, you only get 110 volts across you. This is still very dangerous but not as deadly as 220 volts on its own.
- PatLv 61 decade ago
If you do not have a meter to check this out and are not sure do not touch it and if the breakers were not marked then you may need to get a volt meter and check to see what is what anyway.
An electrician should have installed a 120 volt plug for a dedicated appliance like a heater on a single outlet even if it looks like a standard receptacle if not then the 120 volt receptacle should look like a standard plug in with two vertical slots and one round for the ground.
240 volt receptacles do vary in size and shape for different amperage's and should be different then a standard plug in.
They should be a single receptacle as well and it could have one vertical slot and one horizontal and one round one. It could have two horizontal slots and one round or two slots that are positioned to look vertical on a tilt something of this nature.
If you can go to LOWE'S .com and look up receptacles in the electrical site and look at the different receptacles they show pictures of and it will tell you 120 volt and 240 volt and the amperage rating and this way you can see the pictures of the receptacles that you may have.
Hope this had made sense to you.
Source(s): Electrical Contractor