weird garage wiring

[Chris142]

My dads house has a detached 2 car garage. He was quite the hoarder so I have been cleaning up the garage.in the past the compressor was plugged into a socket on the west side. It would blow a fuse if the garage lights were on at the same time. This made the garage go dark lol.

Today I moved the compressor to the south side and plugged it into a socket there. Turned it on and it blew the fuse for the swamp cooler!

I can't imagine that there's 2 power feeds to the garage. I figured all 3 sockets would be on the same circut

 

[JHZR2]

I'm pretty sure our lights and the outlets in the garage are on separate circuits. I live in an old home so don't assume anything is "to code"' but it sure seems like common sense that if one blew a socket the lights wouldn't go out.

Sounds like they tapped a feed off the swamp cooler for original power, with a switch run(can you turn the garage lights on and off from the house?) to the lights that got tapped for a plug.

Regardless the compressor is unsafe for those circuits.

 

[Chris142]

Yes i can turn the lights on and off from inside the House as well as inside the garage. The compressor pulls 19amps and its on a 20 amp fuse. Its ok as long as nothing else on that circuit is on.

 

[Chris142]

Btw my dad fixed this problem by putting a penny under the blown fuse and screwing the fuse back down. Atleast I put a real fuse in there lol

 

[Pop_Rivit]

When you start getting into the wiring of older homes, it's always interesting what jury rigging has been done. We once flipped a 1920's bungalow-the electric panel had been upgraded to 100 amps and circuit breakers (from the original 60 fuse panel), but the entire main floor was on a single circuit breaker-outlets, lights, everything. There were single bulbs in the basement that were on their own dedicated circuit breaker-one single bulb per circuit, and lots of empty slots for more breakers. At one point the new wiring had been tied into the old knob and tube wiring without even using a box-just wires twisted, nutted and wrapped with tape.

Needless to say when we were finished everything was up to code.

 

[Donald]

Originally Posted By: Chris142
My dads house has a detached 2 car garage. He was quite the hoarder so I have been cleaning up the garage.in the past the compressor was plugged into a socket on the west side. It would blow a fuse if the garage lights were on at the same time. This made the garage go dark lol.

Today I moved the compressor to the south side and plugged it into a socket there. Turned it on and it blew the fuse for the swamp cooler!

I can't imagine that there's 2 power feeds to the garage. I figured all 3 sockets would be on the same circut


They might have run 12-3 wire there and had 2 110V circuits, each on one leg of 220V. Thus they can share the neutral. If that is the case, make sure not to rewire things so both circuits are on the same leg of 220V.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Donald
Originally Posted By: Chris142
My dads house has a detached 2 car garage. He was quite the hoarder so I have been cleaning up the garage.in the past the compressor was plugged into a socket on the west side. It would blow a fuse if the garage lights were on at the same time. This made the garage go dark lol.

Today I moved the compressor to the south side and plugged it into a socket there. Turned it on and it blew the fuse for the swamp cooler!

I can't imagine that there's 2 power feeds to the garage. I figured all 3 sockets would be on the same circut


They might have run 12-3 wire there and had 2 110V circuits, each on one leg of 220V. Thus they can share the neutral. If that is the case, make sure not to rewire things so both circuits are on the same leg of 220V.


That would make sense if it were just the light and the load. But the swamp cooler should be on a completely different circuit, not imbalanced on one leg of the 220...