Did my Electrician screw up?

[pooch]

We had our basement finished when we moved into our house in 2008 (house was only 2 years old). While they were building the basement up I had the electrician install a wire to a box outside where we would eventually install a hot tub. Not knowing what kind of tub I just told him to make it heavy duty. Now that we are closer to our purchase I noticed that the wire has only two wires one with red on it and one all black, both surrounded by silver cables and housed in a plastic sheath. We are not sure which tub we will end up with but are strongly looking toward the HS Vanguard or similar type tub. In the Hotspring wiring diagram it seems we need a four wire cable. Does anybody know if the electrician screwed up. If so, what would need to be done to remedy the problem.

The text printed on the wire is the following:

All Type SE Cable Style U XHHW-2 600 V 2 CDRS 6 AWS (13.3 MM2)

Here is a closeup of the wire.


Hopefully this makes sense. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[agh1890]

I am sure there are a bunch of people who can better answer this question for you as I am far from being an electrician.

My understanding is that you probably need 240V

I believe this is accomplished by pulling both phases out of your breaker box along with a ground and a neutral wire.  I think the ground and neutral are common in the breaker box.  Once you come out of the breaker box you need to go into some sort of a GFI Square D arrangement.  The Square D I believe seperates out the Ground and Neutral. You get 240V because phase 1 and phase 2 and 180degrees out of phase so when one is at +120V the other is at -120V which creates a 240 difference across the leads.

From the GFCI you would connect you 4 wires into the SPA so that the GFCI sits in the middle of the circuit and and stop the current if a current leak is detected. 

From the picture you are showing it looks like you don't have a 4 wire set up and it also looks like you are using aluminum wire.  I believe most spas manufactures want you to use copper as it conducts better than aluminun.

I don't know if your electrician screwed up.  If you just asked for a heavy duty circuit without telling him what it is for there are many ways it could be interpreted.  There are very few things in a house that require 240V (electric stoves, central air, electric dryers) and I think you can still find some 3 wire 240V application in some of those. 

I would suggest you contact your electrician and verify you are both on the same page as you are going to be sitting in a pool of water that is plugged into a circuit with probably either a 50amp of 60amp breaker on it.  Better safe than dead.   

Again I only sort of know what I am talking about please feel free to correct me if I got something wrong but what you have does not look right to me.


FYI

There is a good link at http://www.spadepot.com/spacyclopedia/wiring-hot-tub-spa.htm which shows how to wire up a 4 wire spa.

[TwinCitiesHotSpring]

personally I am not a huge fan of aluminum wire, it has far more resistance (near double I believe) vs copper, and also may require special connectors to adapt to copper so you can run into some tricky situations if you have both aluminum and copper wiring in your home.  I can see in a huge commercial building with miles of wire where all aluminum wire is used to cut costs, but in my own home I prefer copper.  Also don't quote me 100% on this as I am not an electrician but I am not even sure #6 AWG aluminum (depending on how far the run is to the tub) will suffice for a full 50 amp service, I say this because in my experience most electricians are most comfortable running #6 copper for a standard 50 amp service and I was always told if your using aluminum you have to bump up 1 size at least due to the resistance change....again I am not an electrician so maybe someone with more aluminum wire experience will comment on this, these are just things I have experience on my own


and as far as a Hot Spring tub is concerned, a four wire service (2 line voltages, neutral, ground) will be run from your main service, 99% of the time you will be using #6 or #8 AWG for this run to the subpanel box.  From the subpanel to the tub your wiring will differ depending on the model of spa, assuming your looking at Hot Spring they typically use a 6 wire service (4 lines total, neutral, ground) which is typically ran in #10 and #12 wire through a 3/4" conduit

[pooch]

Thx for the info guys!

I had a bad feeling when I checked the wire out it was the wrong type. Hopefully new wires can be fished to outside box since the basement is now finished. I did say it was for a hot tub and needed to be 240v. I remember him saying it was a smart move to do it then before the basement was finished, LOL. Too bad it wasn't done properly.

[Waterbug]

I'm not an electrician but you may be able to install a sub-panel with the wiring that you have, if you install a ground rod.  My reason for saying that is because the drop wire that feeds your main panel only has three wires.  Take your information to an electrician and ask him.  A local electrician will know the local codes.

[Chas]

What country are you in?

 

[Waterbug]

  Exactly !!  Where you live dictates what will be acceptable. As stated, your drop is two 120VAC legs and a neutral.  What happens from there is all CODE BS, that varies by locality and a lot of times the knowledge of the inspector.

[clover]

The only good advice at this point in time is to make your hot tub selection and get the PROPER wiring information.  Then, and only then, will you know the RIGHT way to do it.

Your current hook up is "proper", but for what?  Yes, it should have been copper, but copper is more expensive and cheaper pricing usually gets the job.  3 wires, 6 wires, 4 wires, that is determined by the product you purchase.  Go buy a hot tub and your electrician can go from there.

Your present hook up to an outside GFCI box is adquate for up to 50 amps, but only copper wire can be connected to the spa.  You should use "flux" on the aluminum connections to minimize heat or fire problems.

As for your 3 wire hook up that you have, look at Sundance, it uses a 3 wire hook up that you are ready for.

[pooch]

Not sure on the make and model until we do some wet tests. I think we'll wait before we have them narrowed down to change the wires. Since the previous wire is run he should just be able to attach the new wires to the end and fish them thru. It looks to me from everything I read that for most larger tubs a four copper wire run should be sufficient. The four wires being a #8 awg white (neutral), #10 awg green (ground), #8 awg blue (L1) and a #8 awg Red (L2).

Still seems it's smart to wait to choose the setup until the tub is chosen but we might have to build the deck and wiring before we choose the tub. It will probably be between the HS Vanguard, Sundance Optima, Jacuzzi J-470, Artesian Piper Glenn and the Marquis Euphoria.

Would this electrical run be sufficient for all these? Seems like the run from the breaker box to the GFCI Subpanel is pretty common.

We live in Wisconsin. Can't wait to start wet testing.

Thanks again for all your help, it's nice to have advice about something you know nothing about.

[sorebikr]

Hey Pooch -

Do some more research on your own to verify what I'm about to tell ya, cause I'm afraid you might not like it.  The exact tub will dictate the power requirements of course.  But its a pretty safe assumption that any 220w tub is going to need a minimum of 50amps.  Some require 60amps.  (As I said it depends). 

Assuming you purchase a 50amp tub, you'll need 6awg copper wire (THHN not romex).  There are a lot of tables out there that help describe the gauge requirements for different loads.  Such as this one.  http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Wire-Gauge_Ampacity  I'm certain this is true.  (I also prefer to use a ground equal to the hot wires, but I know that's overkill)

The rules are also different for aluminum.  It can't carry the same load, so you'd actually need to step up to 4awg to handle a 50awg load.  This definitely means your existing wire needs to come out.

I also believe (less certain of this factoid) that its frowned upon to connect copper to alum.  The reason is that someone working downstream from the alum wont know its there, and may put too heavy a load on the line assuming the whole run is copper.  EDIT - just saw you were hoping to use the existing wires to pull the new stuff.  Sorry to say this is unlikely to work.  If your electrician was decent (and I wonder why he used alum to begin with...) he would've securely stapled that wire to the studs along the entire run.  Also, since you'll need to use TTHN and not romex, I think you'll have to run it inside of conduit.  You'll have to research that bit yourself.  My run was in my crawlspace and then out to the tub, a wet environment, so I knew I had to use pvc conduit.


If you're planning on doing this on your own, there are a lot of good resources out there (I just hooked up my tub in October).  But if you're hiring an electrician, I'm sure he'll set you on the right course. Just be prepared for what he'll tell you.

Good luck

Not sure on the make and model until we do some wet tests. I think we'll wait before we have them narrowed down to change the wires. Since the previous wire is run he should just be able to attach the new wires to the end and fish them thru. It looks to me from everything I read that for most larger tubs a four copper wire run should be sufficient. The four wires being a #8 awg white (neutral), #10 awg green (ground), #8 awg blue (L1) and a #8 awg Red (L2).

[TwinCitiesHotSpring]

Not sure on the make and model until we do some wet tests. I think we'll wait before we have them narrowed down to change the wires. Since the previous wire is run he should just be able to attach the new wires to the end and fish them thru. It looks to me from everything I read that for most larger tubs a four copper wire run should be sufficient. The four wires being a #8 awg white (neutral), #10 awg green (ground), #8 awg blue (L1) and a #8 awg Red (L2).

Still seems it's smart to wait to choose the setup until the tub is chosen but we might have to build the deck and wiring before we choose the tub. It will probably be between the HS Vanguard, Sundance Optima, Jacuzzi J-470, Artesian Piper Glenn and the Marquis Euphoria.

Would this electrical run be sufficient for all these? Seems like the run from the breaker box to the GFCI Subpanel is pretty common.

We live in Wisconsin. Can't wait to start wet testing.

Thanks again for all your help, it's nice to have advice about something you know nothing about.

yup sounds good, but depending on the length of run your electrician may want to use #6 instead of #8....and the run from the box itself to the tub will be relatively straightforward, except the Hot Spring will require a couple more wires because it runs a dual breaker disconnect....also greetings from Minnesota neighbor 

[clover]

Pooch, we are all wasting our time trying to help, as you seem to have expectations of making your existing wire supply to work for what ever you buy even if you have to run additional wires to accommodate your selection.

You do not have a neutral wire in your aluminum set up.  You will need it for a 4 wire hook up.  You will also need additional wires for a hot Spring dual circuit hook up.

Do your self a favor and forget ALL of the variations of hooking it up all of the different spas out there.  Go out and buy a hot tub and get the wiring specs.  If you are inclined to avoid rewiring what is there, pay particular attention to Sundance and Jacuzzi, both of which use a 3 wire hook up for which you are prepared for.

Buy your hot tub BEFORE you do the deck.  I don't know what your plans are for the deck, that is a whole different topic, as you need to provide service access.

As for copper meeting aluminum, if aluminum goes to a terminal connection for the breaker or QD, the copper wire will be attached to a different terminal screw and should not represent a problem. 

Never use a wire nut connecting aluminum to copper.

[pooch]

Thanks for all the advice, will definitely choose a hot tub before deck build to make things easier.