Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire transfer switch question

have a 6 circuit transfer switch but after it was installed I realized that I really should have bumped it up to the 10.

I'm not going to pay to replace the 6 with the 10, but I was wondering as long as the amperage isn't crazy, is it a hazard to put two house circuits onto 1 circuit on the transfer switch? I assume that can be done without any major effort.

No experts have chimed in yet so will give a view, but am NOT expert with electrical service. Even though rather ignorant, I would base the decision on the likely peak total amperage draw on that transfer switch circuit rather than how many house "circuits" are driven by it.

Not sure how you would accomplish that without making the two circuits into one circuit at all times... not a good idea ... it would be much better to just spring for the 10 circuit (or larger) and have it installed for convenience and safety.

Transfer switch? Is that breaker panel?

A 20 amp breaker should have #12 awg wire and not have more than 16 amps for a load.

Most breakers are made to accommodate two wires at the terminal.

There are also combo breakers that have two breakers in the space of one.

Guessing it'll be tied to a gen set?

Is this an automatic transfer switch?

WAG here,

You probably have a 20-30 amp 2 pole (220) and 4 15-20 amp (110) circuits. If you don’t need 220 you could install 2 single 110 breakers in the slots for extra circuits.
Either way I wouldn’t do it, buy the 10 slot don’t mess with swapping breakers or running 2 circuits off of one as it could and probably will backfire on you in a unpleasant way.

Tandem Circuit Breakers

sorry, didn't see that people were responding

its a manual transfer switch and the circuits I want to "combine" are 15A

yea, its going to a generator

I don't know anything about it, I figured someone here has screwed around with it.

I know enough to be dangerous.

As long as you don't upsize anything and create an unsafe circuit you should be fine. When you say 15A circuits I assume you mean 14 ga wire that are on 15A breakers. You can put both wires on the same 15A breaker and still be safe, but you are more likely to overload and trip the breaker simply because you have more devices connected. A tandem breaker as illustrated above is a good solution if available for your panel.

Jerry

Simple, look up the manual on the transfer switch, it will tell you max breaker sizes that will work.

Exactly...

One way to skin that 120v cat

I am using these on my MEP-002a



I need 50 amp 240v to run my portable welder.

I would imagine, a two for one attempt will not pass an inspection. If indeed you need/want/must have and inspection.

Worst case is you'll trip a breaker, assuming the circuits you're combining are 14 ga wire on a 15 amp circuit.

It will be fine as long as the combined load on the 2 circuits doesn't exceed the amps per circuit the switch will support.

You may or may not pass inspection if you care about that, as the terminals aren't designed to clamp multiple conductors. Depends on the inspector.

Best case scenario :

House Burns. No fatalities. Insurance says screw you for Bubba’ ing the electrical.

Hell if it's manual get rid of it and use an interlock made for your breaker box and you can run all your circuits if you want.