Wire for 50A 220V Service - 110' run

smkettner wrote:

john&bet wrote:

westend wrote:

john&bet wrote:
Well, just do as you want as you are on the hook if it is wrong as no one here has given you a clear concise engineered answer as to why it is very wrong or very right to do. I bet 99% of those who answered to not use AL do not know what is feeding thier house thru underground service. Just my opinion is that most of the answers make me sick. JMHO.

Well that's pretty gol durn judgemental, a few guys have shared their opinions on it and the reasons why. Besides the connectivity/splicing issues, #6 AWG UF/TW aluminum is not rated for 50 amp service.

Call it what you want. The truth may hurt. I wire my stuff according to the rules and have been for over 50 years. I don't ask here how to do it, to many wrong opinions. JMHO.

So why not recommend something positive and helpful to the OP or just let it go.

My opinion will be taken as being all wrong if I did do a complete explaination and would take a very long post. One liners wont work. Sorry, but that is my feelings and you don't agree which is your privilage.

wnjj wrote:

Grey Mountain wrote:
Thanks for all the replies. I am now convinced that I am going to use only candles for everything in the barn. ;-)

GM

You can just set them on the hay bales.

GM

Those candles make lighting the arrows a lot easier than 110 or 220.

There would seem to be no reason to pull wire. You can at least double your power with the existing circuit.

There is nothing else on the circuit except some lights, no power tools at all. All my big tools are in my workshop - a separate building on a completely different circuit.

GM

Housted wrote:
If you have an existing 30 amp 4 wire circuit use it. Put a 50 amp outlet for the 5er to plug in to and go on. You will NOT have 50 amps but you probably don't need that much in a storage situation anyway.
When we went to a 50 amp rig, that is what I did and it works just fine. Use a twin 30 amp breaker so both hots are protected properly. All you loose is some capacity!!

Housted

That is what I would do. Just beware that if you have both air conditioners running and turn on a table saw or some other high load, you may trip the breakers. But, you can learn to live with it.

After all, if you're in a park with only 30 amp service, you're running everything on just one 30 amp service and you can deal with that....

joebedford wrote:

Bumpyroad wrote:
I thought that the main problem with aluminum wire, at least back in the 70s when they used it in houses, was that it expanded under the screws holding it to receptacles and caused the screws to back out, creating a gap and resulting heat and fires. their cure was to use a piece of copper wire at the receptacle and hooked that up to the main run of aluminum.

You don't need a 'cure' if you use aluminum rated receptacles in the first place.

IIRC, these were all retrofit in older houses and it was cheaper to add a couple of inches of copper wire than replacing all of the receptacles.
bumpy

Bumpyroad wrote:
I thought that the main problem with aluminum wire, at least back in the 70s when they used it in houses, was that it expanded under the screws holding it to receptacles and caused the screws to back out, creating a gap and resulting heat and fires. their cure was to use a piece of copper wire at the receptacle and hooked that up to the main run of aluminum.

You don't need a 'cure' if you use aluminum rated receptacles in the first place.

If you have an existing 30 amp 4 wire circuit use it. Put a 50 amp outlet for the 5er to plug in to and go on. You will NOT have 50 amps but you probably don't need that much in a storage situation anyway.
When we went to a 50 amp rig, that is what I did and it works just fine. Use a twin 30 amp breaker so both hots are protected properly. All you loose is some capacity!!

Housted

LittleBill wrote:
when i went to a 100 amp subpanel, guess what i used. HD doesn't even sell copper for that size, at least not in ROMEX, i believe they had THHN

When I ran underground service to my shop 10 years ago, HD around here had 2/3 w/ground ROMEX for like $1.25/ft. They still do according to their website but it's $6/ft now!. But that cannot be used underground and the only thing they carried large enough and 'W' rated was 1/o (or maybe 2/o) aluminum, good for 125A. So that's what I used, with the anti-ox on the connections.

Grey Mountain wrote:
Thanks for all the replies. I am now convinced that I am going to use only candles for everything in the barn. ;-)

GM

You can just set them on the hay bales.