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Oops!

1K views 3 replies 3 participants last post by  crazy larry 
#1 ·
II'm posting this question here and in the Garage forum to see if anyone knows what happed to the juice in my garage.

My old service station that I own has 100 amp service. It has a fused main disconnect box that feeds the breaker panel. I just put a new hot tank in today, and I had the electrician wire up a 50 amp breaker, and run conduit to the far side of the shop. We fired up the hot tank without incident. I let it run for about 2 hours, and when I returned to the shop to do some port work on a set of heads, I kicked on my compressor. I also had my salamander running, a small space heater (electric) in the office, the radio and all the lights.

Anyway, my compressor quit running and the lights started flickering. I went to kick the breaker back on for the compressor, but when I did, all of the lights went out. My lights were kind of "strobing" , so I shut all of the power down and went home. Bummer.

I called the electrician and he said I probably blew a fuse in my 100 disconnect box and that the lights, etc were feeding back through the compressor.

Who knows what happened.

Lucciano?
 
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#2 ·
sounds like a fuse to me. I burned one up when i was doing paint. someone had a 40 and a 60 amp fuse in place, the 40 burned up, I dropped two 50's in, and haven't had anymore trouble. I couldn't find anyone who could explain why there were two different size fuses there in the first place, except thats probably all the last electrician who worked on it might have had at the time.....
 
#3 ·
If you blew the fuse in the main disconnect you shouldn't have had any power at all. Sounds like you pulled too much current and blew one leg of the 220 out. That's why the lights were working and the compressor not. Anyways, good thing you were there to shut it down. Let us know what it was exactly. Sounds like it's time for an upgrade to a larger panel.

Kevin
 
#4 ·
the fuse box might have two fuses, allowing the 110 stuff to run, when mine burned the 40A, I lost my 220V lines, and my 110 stuff most notably the lights, dimmed considerably.

I am not an electrician. just a goober thinking outloud.
but i do know how to use my multimeter.:mwink: :p
 
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