I’m running the new electric line for the dryer – it’s 30A, so it needs to be 10AWG, but does it need to be 10-2 or 10-3? The plug I’m using is three-pronged (2 hot, one neutral/ground). Someone I asked said 10-2, but I’m not confident whether that is correct.
If I use 10-2, I’d use the black and white each as a hot, and the ground as the neutral. If I were to use 10-3, I’d use the black and red as the hot, and the white as neutral, but then what do I do with the ground? Do I get 10-3 without ground?
Any quick answers would be great – I’m hoping to wrap this up tonight, but wanna make sure I’m doing it right. Thanks!
Update: Thanks Leigh and Greg – I ended up getting the 4-prong plug and using 10-3 with ground. It meant that I had to put the 4-prong cable (plug) back on the dryer, as I had replaced it with the 3-prong already, but it’s better to do it the right way, even if it is a pain in the you-know-what.
An electric dryer runs on 120/240V (110/220V in USA). So you need 2 hots (220V) and a neutral which will give you the 110V. You also need a ground. 10/3 is what you need, plus the ground. The ground is grounded to the ground bar in your breaker or fuse panel, and also grounded in the box you mount your dryer recepticle in.
Hope it helped.
You can also get a 4 prong plug and box at the hardware store. The plug with cord gets swapped for the one currently on the dryer. The ground on the cord gets grounded to the dryer (there should be a green ground screw). Either way you do it it MUST be grounded. Get 10/3.
I had a guy to update my electrical box from fuse box to breaker box. Since doing this my light goes dim from time to time. When the microwave or any other item is in use it seems to pull usage away from them . For instance a small fan pluged in the living room on at high speed seems to lose power and go at slow speed when microwave is turned on. The refridgerator no longer works properly as well >please help
geneva
Typically, from my experience, this happens when there are too many things on one circuit. It could also be that you need to have your service upgraded; it really should be at least 100amp, though it’s really dependent on the size of the house (among other things). My guess, though, is that there are too many things on the circuit. It’s hard to say exactly what the solution is without knowing (and seeing) the whole situation. It may be a rather easy fix – i.e. there are two (or more – yikes!) lines going into each breaker and there are empty breaker slots – or it may be a complicated fix – i.e. there are only a couple main lines in the house and everything runs off of them, so everything is only on a couple breakers. It may be best to have an electrician look at it and let you know how involved fixing it is going to be.
Greg, over at The Petch House posted a while back about how to figure out how much power you need: http://petchhouse.blogspot.com/2006/03/estimating-electrical-needs.html