Some other questions from my surface level experience with home electricity:
What does single pole vs double pole mean?
What are tandem breakers and how do they work?
In: Engineering
They take the two “hot” lines and the “neutral” line from the transformer (either the big grey ‘pole pig’ on the pole outside or the big green/gray box on the sidewalk) and present it as big metal busses that breakers can attach to.
US household electricity is composed of 3 wires. Two “hots” and one “neutral”. It is 240 volts from hot to hot and 120 volts from one hot to neutral. Single pole breakers only attach to one hot line, so the wiring from the outlet goes to the breaker and to the neutral bar, giving you 120 volts.
Dual pole breakers attach to both hot bars and this gives you 240 volts across the two screws on the breaker. You have the option of connecting to your wiring to both terminals and the neutral or just the terminals, depending on what you need.
Tandem breakers are single pole breakers that are two separate breakers but on the same bus. They’re often lower capacity than regular full sized breakers (a full size single pole breaker can often go to 70 or 80 amps where a tandem breaker is usually 15 or 20).
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