Any electricians out there? high temp wire??

[X-Link]

I ordered some high temp wire, but now I'm thinking I should not have believed what McMaster says.

I ordered this

http://www.mcmaster.com/#8209K13

It says this wire 18 gauge can handle 31 amps?

Can that be right?

It seemed small to me, but I went with it. I plan to wire it in parallel and as it sits my biggest element is 3000 watts so each wire would see a max of 6.25 amps.

Ya think it will be ok?

When I run some wire gauge calculators it comes up with #14 being the smallest.

[Guest]

Re: Any electricians out there?

I'm no electrician but I can tell you what I used and it has been working great. McMaster 14 awg part number 8209K17, says it is rated at 55 amps and 842 F, I run 3 3000 watt elements with a 25 watt SSR and heat sink for each element and I have it on a 50 amp breaker.
I also used high temp ends from McMaster.

[Guest]

Re: Any electricians out there? high temp wire??

Wait now...you are going to run them in parallel or you have an output for each on your controller? If you run them in parallel, the wire will have to be able to take the entire load.

parallel would look like this with the E's being the elements and everything else being wire:

--------T-----------|
        E           E
--------I-----------|

You probably mean you are going to wire each one separately right? like this:

|------------
|              element 
| -----------
| |
| |
Controller--------------  Element
          --------------
| |
| |
| -------------
|-------------  Element

If each one is separate, 240v, 3000 watts = 12.5amps total. That wire says its good to 31A, that should be enough. Even if you miswired something and had a single negative grounding 2 positives somewhere that would be less than the rating of the wire. If you have 3 elements and the will to do things wrong you could put to much down that wire

But in regular copper wire, 30A = 10 gauge. I have never used high temp wire, is it steel? If the rating is really right it should be fine. Me personally I would rather have the thicker wire, but I am kind of a freak on wire safety. What size is your breaker going to be? 30A or less right? If you want a 50A, you have to go with bigger wire. Your wire HAS to be rated higher or equal to your breaker. Higher is safer.

So I was just peepin that wire. That has nothing to do with copper wire at all I would trust their ratings and that probably is safe, but me personally I will be ordering bigger wire for mine.

[Guest]

Re: Any electricians out there? high temp wire??

The hi temp wire you ordered is fine. It's nickel-plated annealed copper which has a much higher load carrying capacity than regular copper wire. As you know it is also temperature rated to 840 degrees and is the correct choice for wiring going to the elements. There are several different wire size calculators. The one you referenced sounds like it is designed for circuit wiring where 14 gauge is the smallest wire permitted(by the NEC code) to be used on not larger than a 15 amp breaker. Other calculators sometimes reference chassis wiring, where single conductor wire in open air can handle much higher loads than romex.

But, your load is 12.5 amps, not 6.25 as nolatodd pointed out. (ohms law --- watts divided by volts = amps)

The term parallel can at times be confusing as elements wired in a parallel circuit can 'share' a length of wire. What I assume you are proposing is to run each element wire directly back to the ssr, which is fine but not an absolute requirement. From the ssr to the source you will need larger wire as it's load will be the combined amperage of all the elements. The circuit feeding the oven needs to be sized based on the total load of all elements, lights, fans, etc.

[Guest]

Re: Any electricians out there? high temp wire??

OK ^^^ he really sounds like he knows what he is talking about, and he said I was right so I like the guy!

Yea that wire is vastly different than copper romex wire. After looking at it last night I believe it's rating. It's nickle plated and wrapped in all kinds of crazy. You should be fine as long as you aren't doing 3 elements on the 1 wire.

I consider all things that are recommended in electricity to be a requirement so I would run the wires separate back to the ssr I think. Like I said though I'm a freak about electrical safety and overkill. I rewired my entire 1st house down in New Orleans top to bottom (I had a guy come in and do the boxes...the big lines scare me ) and I did the whole thing at about half the limits. IE if code says 8 outlets can be on 1 circuit, I put 4. I probably wasted a couple thousand dollars doing it that way, but I never ever EVER blew a circuit or had a problem and that's what I want in electricity. Heck I put every major appliance including computers on a home run right to the box. No lights dimming when stuff comes on.

[X-Link]

Re: Any electricians out there? high temp wire??

The hi temp wire you ordered is fine. It's nickel-plated annealed copper which has a much higher load carrying capacity than regular copper wire. As you know it is also temperature rated to 840 degrees and is the correct choice for wiring going to the elements. There are several different wire size calculators. The one you referenced sounds like it is designed for circuit wiring where 14 gauge is the smallest wire permitted(by the NEC code) to be used on not larger than a 15 amp breaker. Other calculators sometimes reference chassis wiring, where single conductor wire in open air can handle much higher loads than romex.

But, your load is 12.5 amps, not 6.25 as nolatodd pointed out. (ohms law --- watts divided by volts = amps)

The term parallel can at times be confusing as elements wired in a parallel circuit can 'share' a length of wire. What I assume you are proposing is to run each element wire directly back to the ssr, which is fine but not an absolute requirement. From the ssr to the source you will need larger wire as it's load will be the combined amperage of all the elements. The circuit feeding the oven needs to be sized based on the total load of all elements, lights, fans, etc.

Thanks for confirming I got the right stuff. Yes I will run 2 separate wires to each element all coming from a single contactor.

I got it now

[Guest]

Re: Any electricians out there? high temp wire??

I'm here to tell you, Ed IS the man. I have the same wire for over three years with no issues at all. Go for it.

[Guest]

Re: Any electricians out there? high temp wire??

I'm here to tell you, Ed IS the man. I have the same wire for over three years with no issues at all. Go for it.

Thanks JT