Ordered some LED lights for my pole building. With my tester is shows hot neutral reversed. Took the meter and hot is on the wide prong, is this bad for LEDs? Opener doesn't seem to care.

Thanks

 

The LED's aren't polarity sensitive. They don't care.
However.... that problem should be corrected.

 

All LEDs ,by themselves, are polarity sensitive. A led by itself, with reverse polarity, will not light up.
What the op is talking about is the AC polarity for the LED power supply. Connecting the AC either way does not change the DC polarity powering the LEDs.

 

I agree, thought it would be simple.

Pulled the covers off yesterday and I ain't happy. They took a 12/2 and put them in the top of the 50 amp main breaker where the wires from the meter connect. Meter is other side of the wall.




Then they ran the un-fused 12/2 to the other side of the garage to a junction box. There they connected to two cables, hot and ground, no neutrals I'll have to look, the two cables going underground 15' to the pole barn could be UFB.




In the pole barn they come up to the panel, connecting two hots to the buss bar and two grounds.




Above is a double pole 20 and a double pole 30. No idea why running 240, one breaker goes to the 1/2 hp opener and the other to a couple outlets high up for lights. I'll be installing some LED's if they ever arrive.



I don't know, everything seems so wrong and who the hell did that nice old lady have do this?

1) not about to pull the meter to remove the 12/2.

2) I'm not gonna stick my screwdriver in there either.

3) hopefully I can find an electrician that'll spend 5 minutes to do it.

4) those two Federal Pacific panels have to go!!

Anything else?

 

If you have two wire cable with ground to the barn..... you can't have two hots. It looks like the ground and neutral were connected to the same bar. That would yield a 120v panel.
It looks like it starts out as 240v since the black and white is fed at 240v.

That two pole 50A breaker in the panel doesn't look like the main breaker. It looks like a 240v 50A circuit. It looks like if you shut that 50A breaker off..... the lines would be dead. Then you could temporarily move those two wires to the two spare 15A breakers while the repair is in progress. If that 50A breaker is the main.... it should have another breaker in front of it that you could shut off.

 

Sorry, pictures can be difficult.

The two pole 50 is the main. I shut that off and no lights, outlets or opener in the garage. However, go to the pole building and I have 240V -- should have checked that yesterday.

The 12/2 on top of the 50 goes to the junction box that hooks up to TWO cables -- black to black on one and white to black on the other, no neutrals. I think this shows better, in the pole building neutrals go nowhere...



I'm quite sure this is considered a sub panel so no, the neutral and ground shouldn't go to the same bar. And no ground rod either.

The riser is on the garage, down to the meter and underground to the basement. I hoped turning off the main in the basement would kill the garage too, nope. The meter must feed the garage and the basement as separate panels?

Thanks very much, hard to explain.

 

Finally joined Imgur so here is the garage panel, large wires go up through pipe a few inches then through the wall to the meter outside.

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/reV072m.jpg" width="400" height="600"/>

Hope this works.

Edit: Cool, thanks Norm for explaining. DO NOT enter a land line number, they send a text message with the code.

 

And here is the full pole building panel.

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/HJliO2q.jpg" width="800" height="533"/>

Wires bottom right come in from underground. Two on left go to lights and outlets.

 

Yesh, that is quite a mess! And all FPE equipment to boot!

 

I know. I could care less about the pole building right now, I never use it.

Seems to me I've read if you upgrade something, breaker box in garage, I'd have to update everything. I don't know.

When I saw the 12-2 going to the TOP of the 50 main I haven't touched a thing.

 

After two calls to our local electrician and no response I sorta lucked out.

Yesterday afternoon power went out, MN Power message said, "two towns are out, we're looking into it."

Okay, this is a big one! Grabbed my lineman cutters, ran out and cut the 12-2 a few inches after it comes out of the panel. Cut back the sheathing a little, wire nuts on each wire and taped it up.

If I'd known the power would be out 13 HOURS (16° this morning) I would have removed the panel cover and pulled the wires from the breaker. Not that daring I guess.