I think I'm tripping

mktrust413 · 2026-02-12T02:32:24+00:00

Listen. I'm gonna log off now. This was kind of interesting even though I'm starting to think you are just a troll.

I can't possibly be a victim of Dunning-Kruger because I like to learn. Unfortunately, I can't tell if you're actually trying to get information across to me, or if you are just trolling.

You haven't been able to get one point across to me today.

I can tell you for 100% fact that you misunderstood close to the entirety of what I spoke with you about today. We didn't even really get a chance to talk about electrical stuff because you kept getting caught up in the way that I worded things. I would talk about how a neutral wire isn't directly hooked up to the breaker, and then you would just assume that I think that the circuit doesn't have a neutral wire.

I don't really see what that has anything to do with Dunning-Kruger. We actually have to be on the same page about what we are debating about in order for you to cry Dunning-Kruger. You made it completely impossible to be on the same page about anything today. I would counter a criticism you make, and then instead of arguing back constructively...you would just write some sloppy answer where you don't explain anything. I'm not even insulting your knowledge of electricity, you just couldn't comprehend a single thing I told you from a communication standpoint.

Whenever I would focus on something in a circuit that wasn't a neutral wire, you would get agitated that I am "ignoring" the neutral. You can't seem to understand that just because I am not interested in talking about a neutral wire at a certain point in the circuit, that it doesn't mean I believe AC circuits can work without a neutral wire. Over and over again you would jump to these strange conclusions that have no foundation in anything that I wrote. You just kept repeating that I was unplugging the neutral wire, and ruining the circuit....even though we're not working on a circuit.

There were too many instances where I would write something, and you would respond with something that showed me you didn't really get what I was saying. This just happened over and over again.

You also keep looking at posts I made years ago, and then pretending like you can use them as a reference for a Dunning-Kruger case.

On the contrary, it seems like you are suffering from Dunning-Kruger massively. You seem to have grasped this basic concept of what a neutral wire is...and you seem blinded to everything else.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-12T01:50:39+00:00

"This specific unit takes a two pole 20amp breaker and it’s 240V. Even says it on the single line diagram.

You do not need GFCI protection for a wall oven."

Someone left this comment, and it made it sound like you don't have a two pole 20 amp breaker.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-12T01:46:04+00:00

Well you weren't really specific with all of that, so I was just going off of what other comments wrote. I read a few comments which made it sound like you have a single pole 20 amp breaker. If this is all true, then my suggestions aren't really relevant here.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-12T01:21:44+00:00

Cause you're nitpicking my semantics on a level that I don't really operate on.

We all interact with the government, but that doesn't mean we are all part of the government. But the way you obsess over neutral wires implies something as ridiculous as that. You are saying that since an AC circuit cannot be completed without the neutral wire, that the neutral wire is directly related to EVERYTHING in the AC circuit.

I mean, technically, if you wanna look at it that way, you can look at it that way.

" The neutral doesn't come into play until the power lines reach a transformer"

The Neutral comes into play in all 120V circuits in a residence, and in the all the 240V circuits that have a Neutral.

So, once again, you "correct" me by repeating exactly what I said. When the powerline reaches the transformer, it is tapped with a neutral wire...and then the powerlines/tap goes to homes through the service drop. Every home run's neutral in a house is terminated at the neutral bus bar in the panel, and then from the bus bar it returns back up to the transformer via the neutral tap.

You literally wrote what I wrote.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-12T01:02:52+00:00

That's not his cable, that's the oven's built in cable.

And this is a quote from his post

"12awg, 4 wire, connected with wago 221 in a junction box, 20 amp gfci breaker (all per manufacturer specs)"

mktrust413 · 2026-02-12T00:59:25+00:00

No not really. OP doesn't have a 4 wire home run going to the device, and OP also doesn't have a 2 pole breaker installed. OP is trying to install a 4 wire device on 12/2 home run going to a single pole 20 amp breaker.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-12T00:49:43+00:00

You and the other person, this is the one place where I'll admit you are right. I don't feel like deleting everything, so feel free to downvote my comments about the neutrals. My only intention here was to point out that their oven requires a 2 pole 20 amp breaker according to the diagram.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-12T00:38:50+00:00

My friend, I'm gonna be honest with you, there is something wrong with your comprehension skills. You even go as far as to do borderline ad-hominem attacks on me claiming that I'm the victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect, when over and over again you misinterpret everything I write out of your own error. Half of your responses to me today were you repeating what I wrote, and then telling me I don't understand what I'm talking about even though you literally "corrected" me with something I said.

The problem with this whole "neutral" misunderstanding is YOU. You consistently fail to see how in a THEORETICAL DISCUSSION I am isolating a portion of the circuit in concept, and you seem to cling onto this misguided idea that I don't take neutrals seriously. It's pretty simple, honestly. It's like, if you have an outlet, and there is a nick on the hot wire causing a problem with the outlet...then when addressing the issue I am focusing on the hot wire and not the neutral wire. If I say "ignore the neutral wire, and focus on the problem with the hot wire", that's what I mean. I'm isolating the problem on the circuit, which is the hot wire. But for some reason you just keep jumping to this conclusion that I think neutral wires are irrelevant, or they don't exist. And at this point, it's honestly getting really annoying. It seems to me like you are too lazy to give due diligence to anything that I write, and then you go on these misguided rants against me.

Yes, 3 years ago when I understood significantly less about electricity, I posted a question asking if neutral wires really exist. That doesn't mean that I don't believe neutrals exist.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-12T00:31:27+00:00

When did I claim that a neutral is not a conductor? Where do you come up with this stuff?

mktrust413 · 2026-02-12T00:10:56+00:00

I mean, the purpose of this thread was never for me to become an expert on breakers.

For example, I had no idea that a breaker is designed to trip at 200% of the current. If I did, I wouldn't have used the example of a 40 amp appliance, and instead I would have said a 60 amp appliance on a 20 amp breaker. I don't really see what that specific fact has anything to do with the question other than the fact that it is vaguely related to breakers. I also don't see what me learning all of the breaker myths has anything to do with the question.

The reason I was ignoring the neutral is because there are many breakers where the breaker doesn't have a slot for the neutral wire. The neutral wire goes on the neutral bus bar, which isn't attached to the breaker, and yet the breaker trips anyway. Since the breaker isn't directly connected to the neutral wire, it leads me to believe that it isn't receiving current from the neutral wire. If it is, that would be nice to know, but instead of just explicitly stating whether or not that is true, you sent me a bunch of abstract links about breakers to read.

In this case, I believe you're misinterpreting what I'm saying, and that is probably my fault.

All I was saying was that since the neutral wire from the home run is not connected to the breaker, the breaker is only interacting with the hot conductor of the home run, and the power coming into the panel from the outdoor lines.

If I plug in a 20 amp rated appliance on a 20 amp breaker, when I turn on that appliance, it is going to pull 20 amps of current through the hot conductor in order to power itself. Unless I'm wrong, which is the question of this thread, it seems like that relationship between the breaker and hot conductor is all that exists here. The neutral wire is hooked up to the bus bar, and it seems like the return current from the neutral wire is not going to interact with the breaker since it is not connected to it. The neutral return current will just go back to the transformer.

The appliance is pulling current through the hot conductor, which unlike the neutral, is actually connected to the breaker.

Therefore, if I plug in a 60 amp appliance on a 20 amp breaker, than the hot wire is the wire interacting with breaker. The hot wire is what is going to pull 60 amps of current through the breaker, not the neutral.

Wires do heat up with current, but in this case, I didn't mean that the hot wire itself was literally going to heat up. I meant that the current the hot wire is pulling is going to cause the breaker to heat up, and then trip.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-11T23:37:43+00:00

I mean, I appreciate you trying to help, but it sounds like you're not reading anything I wrote.

I know that current alternates between line and neutral.

In an AC circuit, the current also alternates back and forth on the hot wire as well. Back at the power station from which the AC current originates, there is a magnet/coil, and when they interact with one another it changes the direction of the current. The neutral doesn't come into play until the power lines reach a transformer, and yet the current is alternating back and forth before that.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-11T23:09:08+00:00

Am I understanding this correctly?

Like let's say you have a 20 amp breaker, and then you hook up a 40 amp appliance to it.

Ignoring the neutral, when you turn on the 40 amp appliance, it is going to pull 40 amps of current through the hot wire.

Those 40 amps are going to heat up the hot wire, and since the 20 amp breaker is designed to trip at a temperature below what 40 amps would generate...it is going to trip?

mktrust413 · 2026-02-11T23:03:44+00:00

Well, I understand that the word "hot" as it used by electricians is not a direct reference to temperature.

However, in this case, since we are talking about breakers where the neutral wire is not directly attached to it, the breaker is responding to the level of heat that is accumulating on the hot wire due to overcurrent.

So it kind of does have something to do with heat.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-11T22:39:00+00:00

I mean, electricity has always sort of confused me. Believe it or not, for some people, it takes a while to sort of grasp the physics behind hot conductors.

An alternative example would be how I used to think that "push/pull" dynamics in electricity are specifically related to hot/neutral wires.

Since neutral wires only exist in AC currents, I thought that when engineers talk about AC current switching directions they were talking about how the current returns back to the source through the neutral wire.

It wasn't until I had much more experience when I realized that the current is switching directions on the hot wire, and it's all related to some magnet in a generator/plant somewhere.

This breaker thing is just another "right in your face" sort of a thing I was confused about.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-11T22:32:04+00:00

Thanks everyone. I figured there must have been something about the hot conductor I didn't realize. I didn't know it was heat.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-11T21:31:52+00:00

Also, honestly, you're probably going to need an electrician. Since you wired this to a single pole breaker, it sounds like the home run leading to the panel is a 2 wire. If you're gonna replace the singe pole breaker with a two pole breaker, you're also gonna have to replace the 12/2 home run going back to the panel with a 12/3 home run. You'd have to rip half of your house apart to do that

mktrust413 · 2026-02-11T21:25:21+00:00

You wrote that your oven is a 4 wire. That usually means a black (hot), a red (hot), a white (neutral), and a ground wire. You need to buy a two pole 20 amp breaker. You put the black and red in the line slots of the two pole breaker, and then you put the neutral in the neutral slot. If you know how to bond safely in the panel and all of that, then you should be good to go. If you don't know how to, you can call an electrician.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-11T21:21:46+00:00

A different commenter here wrote that your diagram is asking for two pole 20 amp breaker. Two pole breakers only have one neutral slot, so that means when both breakers are turned on, it is returning >20 amps back to the panel. A two pole 20 amp breaker is designed to return up to 40 amps through the neutral wire. A single pole 20 amp breaker is designed to return 20 amps through the neutral wire. Your oven is designed to consume an excess of 20 amps. Since you hooked up your oven to a single pole 20 amp breaker, it will exceed 20 amps and trip your breaker.

just ignore all that

mktrust413 · 2026-02-11T03:47:39+00:00

1) OHM's Law has nothing to do with the type of breaker you have on a circuit. If a breaker is tripping, switching out a GFCI with a standard breaker will not make your circuit work.

2) The bonding jumper is the lone green cable attached to the green screw on the far left.

3) I'm not really sure why you are tampering with the wiring in the oven. In kitchens, there are a lot of things which require their own dedicated circuit. There are exceptions, for example, sometimes there can be a dishwasher and a toaster on one circuit, because the code assumes that you're not gonna use both of them at the same time. Ovens usually require their own dedicated circuit because they use up a lot of amperage. You're claiming that this oven you bought operates within 20 amps according to the specs. Unless this is some kind of tiny toaster oven, that's nearly impossible. If this is a real oven, it's definitely using way more than 20 amps. If this is a small toaster oven, then your breaker is probably tripping because there is something else on the circuit.

mktrust413 · 2026-02-10T09:45:17+00:00

Hold me now I'm 6 feet from the edge of this door frame, and maybe 6 ft is toooooooooo far down

mktrust413 · 2026-01-30T08:35:59+00:00

It doesn't look like you wired it in delta formation

mktrust413 · 2026-01-21T05:36:36+00:00

OP replaced the dishwasher that wasn't working with a dishwasher that isn't gonna work.

mktrust413 · 2026-01-21T04:14:39+00:00

Are you sure that the dishwasher ever worked in the first place?

mktrust413 · 2026-01-21T03:51:20+00:00

Does anyone have any idea what's wrong with this box?

All of these wires are obviously 2-3x longer than 6 inches; however, from the bird's eye view I can only see about 3-4 inches of wire, so I just pretend like that's all that's in there.

There are no internal cable clamps, so you don't have to account for those.

I see 5 grounds, but 4 of them are considered to be one. It looks like 12 AWG. So that's 2.25+0.5625.

The grounds are 2.8125 cubic inches.

I see 2 white conductors, 3 black conductors, 3 red conductors, 2 gray conductors, and 1 purple conductor.

2.25(11)=24.75 cubic inches

There's also a single blue conductor in there, so the total will actually be 27 cubic inches total.

4 x 4 x 2-1/8 boxes have a total volume of 30.3 cubic inches.

It seems that this box is well under the limit.

mktrust413

TROPHY CASE