Split Single Phase in a house panel question

This link diagrams the typical layout of a residential panel and details the phase arrangement:

https://www.homecontrols.com/h...itBreakerConfig1.pdf

Interesting question, never thought of it. According to this Wikipedia article, they are out of phase and you will need to pull the outlets from a consistent leg. There should be a diagram on the panel to let you know the pattern

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...phase_electric_power

Also....What Bmoran said

Every other breaker slot down is on the opposite leg (out of phase) as is the one on the right directly across from the one on the left is on the other leg, again out of phase. You need to use a breaker and then the other one can be two slots down on the same side or one slot down on the opposite side to be on the same leg to be in phase. You can swap positions of breakers to accomplish what you want to do. If you don't know how to safely remove and install breakers, don't do it, get someone that knows how to do it or a electrician to do it. Electricity can kill you if you don't know how to do it. It's better to be safe than sorry. You might not get a second chance.

You can verify what the above guys have told you by simply putting a meter on the outputs of two 120 Volt circuit breakers that you intend to use. Put the meter on the "more than 250 Volt" setting, and touch the meter leads to the two outputs. If you get zero Volts, they are in phase. If you get 240 Volts, they are not.

My house was built when aluminum wiring was phased out, so in order to save copper, the electrician wired part of the house with 3 conductor wire, with ground, on separate phases.  Lights in the kitchen wound brighten when the microwave cycled on.    Drove me crazy, so I started measuring currents with an inductive ammeter.  The neutral would go to almost zero when both legs had a load, because they were out of phase.

The neutral only carries imbalance current.  In a well designed house there will be almost no current on the neutral.

Thank you to everyone. All outlets in phase now. I may be running the layout in passive mode with a brick for each block. Got to thinking what may go wrong when one pick-up roller on an engine is in one block and the other pick-up passes into the next block that is plugged into an outlet on a breaker that is out of phase in the panel. I'd be scratching my head wondering why the brick's breaker is kicking when I knew the bricks themselves were in phase when I bench tested them. This hobby my not keep the body fit, but really keeps the brain in shape.

The practice of using 3 wire with ground feeder cables has been eliminated, (new wiring).  A phase (Black wire), B phase (Red wire), Shared Neutral (white wire), and ground.  There are some multi conductor non-metallic sheath cables that have more than one neutral conductor, (one for each phase wire).

Rare, but open neutrals, associated with this wiring method, can cause 230 volts on a standard 115 volt outlet.   

Most train layouts can be done with (one) 115 volt, 2 wire, with ground, circuit.

Thanks for the info Mike. I'm planning too large of a layout to power the tracks off one outlet and would like to avoid extension cords. The total length will be 132'. 70' along the back wall of a pole building, then 26' across one end to the front wall, then 36' along that front wall. The breaker box is dead center in the 70' wall. One breaker handles 12 outlets of the north half of the building and another 12 on the south half. The distance is why I'm considering running in passive mode, plugging bricks into those outlets for each block along the way.

WOW! That is going to be an impressive layout.
As Mike stated above, 3 wire + ground cables would reduce the wiring, BUT, then you would need to use a 2-pole breaker, putting you back where this discussion began, with each circuit on opposite phases.

The NEC (code) requires all current carrying conductors of a multi-wire branch circuit to be de-energized simultaneously. You can't use a 3-wire cable and put the hots on opposing breakers in the panel since the handles of the breakers cannot be mechanically connected and thrown simultaneously.

This video explains it very clearly.

It's actually probably not likely you'll use more than 1500 watts to power the layout unless it's really large, so you might just use one outlet.  I use four PowerHouse 180 bricks to power the track and a couple of Z-750 bricks to power switches and accessories.  At a max load on everything, I'm only about half-way to the capacity of one 15 amp 120V circuit which is about 1800 watts.  My microwave or toaster oven use more power from a single outlet than my layout ever will.

Thanks John and RSJB18. It will be big but will take a long time to achieve. One more question I need answered, when a layout is run in passive mode, what gauge wire can you get away with if it's just running DCS signal from the TIU to the individual blocks, that already receive their power from a brick, and does it help to be shielded?

Any size wire wire at all if you're running in passive mode.  You could run #30 and it would work just as good as #12, there is no significant current in passive mode.  I assume you WILL be using aux power for the TIU so you don't depend on FIXED #1 always having power from the track, right?

Thanks to the folks who contributed technical details in this thread.  While I was aware of the need to be in phase, it had never occurred to me that properly-wired circuits could be out of phase with each other.  Not an issue for me at the moment, but I'm ready if it ever becomes one.

Glad the OP questions was answered. Our new club layout is ran off one breaker and to avoid running extension cables and so forth under the layout we ran conduit to 4X4 electrical boxes so that if anything in that area needs plugged in there’s a plug right there. In addition a 20A light switch will be used to kill power so there’s no wearing out of a plug (many do the same with a RF controlled relay)

excuse the mess it is definitely a work in progress but it’s coming along

I also made this PCB to help make clean connections to a 22uh choke to help the DCS signal in passive mode. I our case I used 18AWG (that was what we had extra of) wire from the TIU to the board, I don’t know if this helped any but I also twisted the wires together and so far everything has been good. I’ve only tested the DCS signal with a engine via the DCS remote 9&10’s all the way around both 150’ mainlines.

eventually I need to either drag a oscilloscope or make one of the DCS testers just to see really how well the signal is.

Yes John, aux power. I will start another thread after the holiday with my progress and to get input from everyone. Here's where I'm at so far. Mainly will be a giant dog bone with a big yard in the middle.

Reading the discussion about breaker panel design, I thought I would mention that older Federal Pacific panels alternated legs (phases) in pairs so that it was possible to install a two pole breaker that had the same phase on both terminals of the breaker.  (To get 220 volts one had to be sure to grab a leg from both phases).

I recall solving a problem for a friend who had a new clothes dryer installed at a new location in his home.  Both the "electrician" and the appliance dealer could not figure out why the dryer was performing poorly. I simply pulled an adjacent single pole breaker and moved the two pole breaker down a slot in order to tap into both phases. This why we have meters.

ET

But are not Federal Pacific electrical pannels outlawed and unsafe?

@Dave Zucal posted:

Yes John, aux power. I will start another thread after the holiday with my progress and to get input from everyone. Here's where I'm at so far. Mainly will be a giant dog bone with a big yard in the middle.

That's going to be a great long run down the side, that really shows off long trains.

HUGE RED FLAG

Pacific Federal Electric (PFE) are defiantly unsafe and should be replaced.

Then again I see them quite a bit still in HVAC, I know it can get expensive to replace PFE boxes but that should be planed to get rid of.