Ok, My box and frames are about to come together and I need to order my wiring and electrical stuff so I can have it ready to wire up this weekend. After spending about 15 minutes mucking around in search, I just decided to start a new thread.

What gauge of wire should I use for wiring up my ballast and mogul base, along with everything else in my PJ? Is 20 too small?

Thanks in advance!

The fist thing you need to know is how much amperage you will need and the voltage and buy a size appropriate to the amperage. Follow this link to check out the NEC ampacities charts for the American Wire Gauge sizes.

Sounds complicated. I have no idea what amperage my monitor or coil ballast runs at, they are both AC 120V I guess. I'm also running two Evercools that are DC 12V and have a rated current of 0.07-0.13 amps.

What's everyone else using with success?

I think I'm using 12 gauge.

Amps is fairly easy to figure out. Watts is Amps * Volts.
You know the watts, probably 400? And you know the volts (110 - 120). So your amps are:
400/120 to 400/110
= 3.333 to 3.636

And always figure on a %20 startup boost for most electronics and fans. You'll never have a problem by going to a higher gauge. You'll also avoid some power loss due to the smaller gauges taking some power for themselves because of their resistance and warming up. Costing you Lumens!!

Also Electricians normally go by their code that states:

1. You must have a breaker on each circuit and downstream on that circuit all wiring must be rated the same as the breaker.

That means: Most houses have 15A circuit breakers to each general purpose room, so all wiring connected to that circuit must be capable of handling that 15A, including the actual socket in the wall.

2. You may add a sub circuit using a fuse or breaker, but all wiring downstream must be rated the same as the fuse or breaker.

That means: We can add a fuse or resettable breaker (like on powerstrips) but we must wire with a gauge that can carry that much current to actually trip the breaker. Smaller gauge wire has the possibility of heating up and smoking and even catching fire before drawing more current than the breaker is set to trip at.

Now as with most ratings, I think there is a safety factor built in, but this project has the very real capability of catching your house on fire if it's not respected.


Here's probably what you need after you take a look at every piece of electronics in your case and add up the amps and then add a 20 percent startup/peak allowance: