I wonder if you could help me out I brought my Hi Fi across from England when I emigrated to the US.There are 6 components,amp,cd,tuner,cassette etc., running on 220-240 volt, 50-60 hertz.Up to now I have been running them on a step-up transformer I bought on the internet,it hums a lot! Since moving to another home here I have full access to a large basement and have already done some re-wiring and made some connections to the breaker panel.Now,I thought of putting in a 220 volt receptacle in the living room to run my Hi Fi,I was initially daunted and confused about the wiring arrangement of such a receptacle in that there being two hots and an earth but no neutral, but went ahead anyway, I know the neutrals and earths are on the same bar in the breaker panel.Now I am perplexed as to how to wire the 220 v plug. How do I get the 220 volts down one wire?The way I did it,it kept tripping the breaker.I wired the hot wire across the two 110 pins of the plug and the neutral and earth together to the earth,wrong huh?I believe I put the correct breaker in the panel,it's a 20 amp double pole,at least I get a reading on the multimeter of 240 volts at the two hots on the receptacle.I have a power strip that I got when ordering the transformer,it takes all six plugs for my HiFi components,I cut off the european schuko plug that went into the transformer and was then perplexed at how to wire up the cord to the new plug for the receptacle,the earth wire speaks for itself but how do I wire the hot and neutral?How do you derive the 220 volts to run something here?:confused:

I have what I think is a bad light switch in my kids room. There are multiple outlets connected in here (3 of them are light switches for sure). My wife went to turn on our bathroom light when she heard what turned out to be electricl static and the lights would not come on. I checked the switch and it looks OK in the bathroom. I then checked the bedroom switch in my kids room and I could hear the same static when I reappplied the power to the breaker. This tells me this switch is more than likely the culprit. There are a total of 3 romex 3 wire cables leading into this box. I think one os for this switch in the kids room and the other 2 most likely lead to the bathroom switch and the other one to another light switch in a smaller bedrrom. I want to know what type of switch I should buy to replace this with and how to wire it up. The existing switch has 3 bars on top and 3 bars on the bottom that the wiring snaps into right now (original switch). the top 3 bars have 2 romex wires (for a total of 6 wires snapped into it and the bottom has the remaining wire. Balck to the left, copper in the middle, and white to the right terminals. I am sorry if I haven't given enought info. please let me know if there is anything else anyone needs to assist me in this matter. I know I should rewire the entire place but I am currently unemplaoyed which makes this not an option at this time. Thank you.