220 Line; could be it only 110 all along?

Question

An electrician came in this evening from management, and told me that my designated 220 line, in fact, is not a 220 line. How could my 20,000 BTU AC run on a 110v line for eight years? Is this possbile. Could they have just use more Amps? What colors are the wire of the 220 line. The socket has only two wires, one black and one white? The electrician is suppose to be here tomorrow morning to fix this situation. Thx so much.

Answer 1

Most homes if not all homes have 220 VAC going into the meter box. From there the wires go to a circuit breaker box.

At the box each wire connects to a buss bar. Each bar has a load of circuit breakers going into the home to power parts of the home. Each circuit will come back to the breaker box and end up on a common ground connection from both buss bars as 110 VAC.

If you connect something directly between the two buss bars, like electric stove, electric clothes dryer, and central air conditioner, you will be connecting 220VAC to the units. They also use higher rated amp breakers. Hope you are not too confused with this maybe someone else can take a stab at it.

Answer 2

pull the front cover off and get some answers for yourself.  First we are looking at some misnomers.  Its not a 110v or a 220 v line.  You can get a simple voltmeter stick it in the outlet and read the voltage for your self.  It appears that your air conditioner is running on 120v.  If the electrician is going to fix the situation, he's going to do it right no matter what's going on.  Hope fully you'll find a ground wire for your air conditioner, ground being the most important wire on the air conditioner.  Also ask the electrician if its really 240v or 220v.

Answer 3

http://inifno.qqb.org.ru

you can get much information in this website,stay a minute in website and check anyone link at a time,you can aslo get your answer in Google Search in this website, which has helped me alot

Answer 4

Check the data plate on your ac.  If your ac is 240, the installers didn't mark the white wire with black tape to designate it as a hot wire.  An appliance designed to run on 240 will not run on 120.

Answer 5

you have a 120 line,your ac must cost plenty,ask the electrician if it can run on 220 (half the cost)

Answer 6

First off a 240v line has a different type plug. The largest airconditioner I have ever seen on a 120v line is 12kBTU.So I must think that you are missunderstanding what he is saying.