Several years ago I installed a 220V/50A outlet in my garage (for a welder). I would like to install a 110V/20A outlet nearby. Can I supply this 110V outlet from the 220V outlet (using one “hot” leg and the neutral)? Will the 220V breaker have problems with up to 20A flowing in one leg and not the other?
Nope, that’s a code violation.
Yes, you can. But…
No, you may not.
There are plenty of adapter plugs though.
You may be able to replace the welder receptacle with a small subpanel and have two circuits in the subpanel - one 240V 50A double pole for the welder and one 120V 15A single pole for the receptacle.
This assumes that you have a 4 wire circuit (H/H/N/G) going to the welder outlet. The 120V must be GFCI protected in the garage.
This is what I did. The GFI sub panels are readily available.
replace the 220V/50A receptacle with a subpanel. run circuits after that.
you could feed both the 220V/50A receptacle and the subpanel with the current wires that you have.
it is the safe and legal way.
Agreed. A Sub panel is required.
Anything running off that 220V? A welder draws a lot of amperage. Needs its own circuit. If you’re simply re-purposing an unused 220 then your good.
OK. Rather than replacing the 220V outlet with a subpanel, I may just run another branch down from the 110V outlet that’s in the middle of the ceilng (for the garage door opener).
But can you tell me why it’s against code? What’s the safety issue involved?
Probably because it loads half of the 220v, causing one side to draw more current than the other, which may effect the 220v device. Then there would be a problem defining ground, I believe.
The #1 reason is that you cannot protect a general purpose receptacle at 50A. You can either do 20A with 12 gauge minimum or 15A with 14 gauge.
:smack: Don’t know why I didn’t see that. Even running 12-gauge wire from the 110 outlet to the 220 outlet, that still leaves the 110 outlet on a 50A breaker. Dopy me.