Question about max amps for an outlet and how to increase?

How do I know how many amps is safe to plug into one outlet at a time? How would I go about about increasing this amount so I can add more watts?

look at the breaker, but remember the breaker may run all outlets in the room or other room. dont think you can increase, but i'm no electrician.

So is it rare to have a house that can handle an 8k watt grow?

iFreeSki420 said:

So is it rare to have a house that can handle an 8k watt grow?

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No...I am currently running over 12000 watts plus all the house hold, testing off my mains, I am drawing 90+amps. You can not just change the plugs, the wires dictate how much load your allowed. 14/2 wire is for 15 amp breakers, 12/2 is for 20 amp breaker and so on. You can buy testers at HD to test the load of the breakers. Be careful

Remember don't fuck with electrical unless you know exactly what ur doing you can burn the house down or worse kill yourself.

i run 30 100wx23 cfl plugged into one outlet via power strip with no problems

I just went through this building my garage into veg+flower rooms wired for 8000 watts. If you use a 1000 watt light for example you need to find the amps because that's the unit the breakers run off of. To find amps you divide the watts of your item, 1000w light by the voltage that you are using, in my case I used 110 = 9.09. So, we know your 1000w HID lamp runs at 9 amps. The breakers you choose should only use 75-80% of max amps: 20 amp breaker=15 amps. So if you plug your 1000w, 9 amp light in you should be fine. DO NOT fuck off this part of your grow room design it will/can bite you so hard later. I just ran a sub-panel from my main box with ( 20 amp breakers 4 for flower (4000w lights+ fans+ACs+controls+un-expected) and the other (4) 20 amp breakers go to the veg room for T5 lighting etc etc. Whether you're going big right off the bat or are planning on going big in the future , be safe and don't skimp on electrical. I actually hired an electrician off craigslist to run a 6/3 gauge wire to my sub-panel because I wasn't 100% sure about it ($80) well spent! Good luck dude and hit me up if have any questions. No fires, safety first!!

Thanks for the help so far. My plan is to do as much research as possible and make a reasonable plan after. I don't want to mess with electricity, but would like to do a large grow eventually if the stars aline.

From my research so far it looks like most house breakers are 15 to 20 amps. With 80% utilization that would be 12 or 16 amps respectively. At 120v, a 1000w light uses 8.3 amps. How do you use more than 2k watts? From your posts it looks like wiring is important. Do some rooms have more than one breaker?

I will look into hiring an electrician, but want to understand as much as possible on my own first

I use 240 for my lights makes life easy.

some rooms do have two breakers a lot of master bedrooms do and to figure it out try killing the power to your room by faulting the circuit or just flipping breakers till your buddy says "thats it!"
if your whole room shuts off you may want to run a heavy duty cord from a different room and that way you will be able to split your power. doing this may help you get 2 kw but anything more you may need a sub panel or something

mrblu said:

I use 240 for my lights makes life easy.

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Can I run the AC and other electronics at 240v also? Is there a difference in efficiency or quality between 120 and 240?

tomascat said:

i run 30 100wx23 cfl plugged into one outlet via power strip with no problems

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I realize that is only about 700 watts, but that is still a pretty bad idea.

you need to have a window unit rated for 240 volt. but check the amps on the breaker box. depending on your wiring you may have 30 or 40 amp breakers. im going to run some bigger wire like 6 gauge and put a 50 amp breaker in sometime soon when i add some more lights. just count up your amps and make sure you dont go over. and you cant just put bigger breakers in without the correct wiring or you will burn something down.

if you do run an extension cord, use the heaviest gauge you can and only use the length required. i cut mine to size and put a new end on it.

iFreeSki420 said:

Can I run the AC and other electronics at 240v also? Is there a difference in efficiency or quality between 120 and 240?

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As I understand it.....

240 volts is more effective per $ spent on electricity.....as we are charged on Watts not Amps....using 240 will lower your electricity bill as it will draw double the amps but will use half the watts

BTW....this is refering to North America......Europe does not use 120 volts AC

Ok so basically if I don't have a breaker with enough amps, I can get one installed using low gauge wiring? I can hire an electrician from Craigslist to do this for me?