Sanity check on 60amp wiring

Hi folks, I'm slowly putting together a new 1BBL electric system and wanted to see if I could leverage the brainpower of those of you with a more solid electrical background than I have. I'm perfectly comfortable throwing a new 20amp breaker into the panel and doing the end-to-end wiring, but GFCI and 240v will be a new experience. I'm pretty sure that I understand the basic principals, but just would like a 2nd opinion before I start making purchases.

I have a Cutler Hammer 200amp main panel which accepts the "CH" line of breakers and would like to add a 60amp circuit with the intention of having an anticipated max load of two 240v 5500w elements, two Chugger pumps on a 120v branch, a BCS 462, and whatever small electrical "shiny things" that I feel the need to pretty up the control panel with. The spa panels are nice, but I would like to save the space if possible and just use a GFCI breaker in the main panel and drop it to a receptacle.


What I'm thinking:
Add a CH260GF 2-pole 60amp GFCI breaker
Spec Sheet

Drop straight down below the main panel in the garage (about 4' total length) with 6/3 romex with ground like this:
Link


Here's where I'm a little unsure of myself.... can a 60a 3-phase 4-wire receptacle and plug be used? Wired as gnd, hot, hot, neutral rather than for 3 phases?

I was looking at this receptacle:
Leviton 9640

There is also an isolated ground version Leviton 9640-IG


...and this plug:
Leviton 9462-P


Between the receptcacle and brewery control panel, I was looking at some 6/4 SOOW cord... Realistically probably only about 8 - 10 feet in length, but I'll call it 15' for purposes here as a max.
6/4 SOOW cord


I know that most of you seem to terminate a plug on the main power cord and have a receptical in the panel... I was kinda just thinking of using a strain relief and hard wiring into the control panel. Is there a reason to not do that which I am not considering?

Thank you very much for any expertise that you can share!
Jason

Those Leviton plugs are fine. They are NEMA 14-60, so not for three phase. Three phase is NEMA 15-60, and would work, but would be nonstandard.

You can certainly hardwire the control panel with a strain relief.

It all looks reasonable to me, but I am not an electrician.

I think you can find cable at a better price. http://www.wireandcabletogo.com/Por...SOOW/10-4-SOOW-Portable-Cord-600V-UL-CSA.html

I think jeffmeh nailed it. In my opinion, I feel that hardwiring your power cord to your control panel would be the preferred method over having it being removeable. I think there would be less chance of the cable accidentally disconnecting in the middle of a brew. That's what I did with mine.

Oops, I stand corrected.... One of those rare times when being wrong is actually a good thing!

Thanks for the link on the cable! It looks like that one is for 10/4... 15' of the 6/4 came out to be about $72 with shipping from them, so a tad more than Temco, but I'm going to need quite a bit of 3-wire SOOW to go from the panel to the kettles so I will price it all out with those guys too... nice to have a place to compare prices with!

Thank you for your time and thoughts!!

Thank you... That is kind of what I was thinking too. The less 60a rated things I have to buy, the better!

tyzippers said:

I think jeffmeh nailed it. In my opinion, I feel that hardwiring your power cord to your control panel would be the preferred method over having it being removeable. I think there would be less chance of the cable accidentally disconnecting in the middle of a brew. That's what I did with mine.

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So it looks like for 50' of 10/3 SOOW and 15' of 6/4 SOOW, the guys you referenced came out neck and neck with Temco when shipping is taken into account... Have you had good experience with Wire and Cable To Go?

I don't know a thing about Temco... I had just earmarked them along with a bazillion other places for parts sources as I was researching this project. If they worked out ok for you, that's a good enough reason for me to use them at this point!

Thank you again for the link.

jeffmeh said:

I think you can find cable at a better price. http://www.wireandcabletogo.com/Por...SOOW/10-4-SOOW-Portable-Cord-600V-UL-CSA.html

Click to expand...

Disclaimer I am not an electrician, and I don't know anything about electric brew set ups:

That being said, you are not limited to cutler hammer breakers, almost all breakers these days are basic T slot and there is a lot of brand interchangability. So you might be able to save a few $$ there.

I am unsure of how often the brew set up needs to be de-energized but breakers are NOT switches and using them as such can lead to problems like breaker faillure or worse replacing the whole panel if it works loose and arcs out. That may be one of the reasons behind using a SPA box it gives you a GFCI and a disconnect in one box

Laslty running a 120 load off of what your doing may cause nusiance trips when the break picks up an unbalanced load. Unless you were talking about running a separate 120V circut and not a multi wire.

I did run across the nuisance trip conversations when splitting off a 120 branch and had ultimately decided that it wasn't going to be a factor because this type of breaker was able to monitor each leg independently when neutral is used, but now I am back to second guessing myself...

From looking at all of the schematics posted up here on HBT (at least P-J's), they appear to be coming into the control panel as a single 4-wire 240v GFCI circuit and branching inside inside the control panel. Am I looking at them wrong?

Thank you for mentioning it... I evidently wasn't as comfortable with that assumption as I thought I was, so I would like to get a solid answer.

As far as my experience goes, spa panels do not provide disconnects either. Typically they only contain a GFCI 240V breaker. Also, if you want to try to avoid nuisance trips, you could try to balance the load between the legs by using 120V from both legs. I'm not sure it's worth it for two pumps and a few other low power electronic gadgets. I don't think you'll have any issues. PJ knows what he's doing.

P-J may know what he's doing, but I'm questionable. Totally within the realm of possibility that I've interpretted it wrong, but the top left of the diagrams of his that I've tried to learn from all say "Power input from main breaker panel is from a __amp GFCI breaker to a 4 conductor __amp receptacle", then he brings in the nuetral, ground and two hot legs to their own terminal block and branches out.

Regarding flipping the breaker on and off, I was planning on just unplugging from the wall when I'm done.

jas0420 said:

P-J may know what he's doing, but I'm questionable. Totally within the realm of possibility that I've interpretted it wrong, but the top left of the diagrams of his that I've tried to learn from all say "Power input from main breaker panel is from a __amp GFCI breaker to a 4 conductor __amp receptacle", then he brings in the nuetral, ground and two hot legs to their own bus bar and branches out.

Regarding flipping the breaker on and off, I was planning on just unplugging from the wall when I'm done.

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Put a main power switch in your control panel that cuts all power through mechanical contactors, turn the switch off, and then unplug the panel. Now worries.

As far as the GFI breaker goes, I am fairly certain that the 2-pole ones you linked to will allow you to run both 240v and 120v in the panel, and work as you would expect. Look at how the wiring goes through breaker in figures 3.6 and 3.7.

digging through some old posts here.... What did you ever wind up doing? Did your system work? If so, does your rig have a system that measures amperage....did you need to have all the 60amp rated things? Thx

From what I can tell my system is very similar to yours...so I was just curious. Sorry for all the questions

awarner322 said:

digging through some old posts here.... What did you ever wind up doing? Did your system work? If so, does your rig have a system that measures amperage....did you need to have all the 60amp rated things? Thx

From what I can tell my system is very similar to yours...so I was just curious. Sorry for all the questions

Click to expand...

In reality two 5500w elements firing at 100% at the same time with a 120v pump and control panel being powered should draw about 47-amps give or take an amp or two but many misquote the 80% rule here and 60 amps is more futureproof than 50 plus they both require the 6awg wire so better to go with 60 amp breakers with minimal cost increase if any...

augiedoggy said:

In reality two 5500w elements firing at 100% at the same time with a 120v pump and control panel being powered should draw about 47-amps give or take an amp or two but many misquote the 80% rule here and 60 amps is more futureproof than 50 plus they both require the 6awg wire so better to go with 60 amp breakers with minimal cost increase if any...

Click to expand...

Thanks. Yeah I have enough knowledge of electricity to know that I need a professional to handle it for me. I have my control panel to run 2 pumps and 2 5500w elements. Trying to decide what I should do since I know it will be pricey...I am setting up my basement brewery on the complete opposite side of my basement and I know the wire isn't cheap

awarner322 said:

Thanks. Yeah I have enough knowledge of electricity to know that I need a professional to handle it for me. I have my control panel to run 2 pumps and 2 5500w elements. Trying to decide what I should do since I know it will be pricey...I am setting up my basement brewery on the complete opposite side of my basement and I know the wire isn't cheap

Click to expand...

as long as you dont plan on running both 5500w elements at the same time (no need for this in 5 or 10 gallon brewing except when making back to back batches and heating the water for the 2nd batch while still boiling the first) you only need a 30amp circuit. each 5500w element will draw between 22 and 24 amps. pumps are usually only a couple amps at most.
you can always go with 4500w ulwd elements which are better for this in my opinion due to their lower watt density thats what I use and they only draw 18.4 amps at the most.