My twin brother and I have been displaced by a deadly EF-4 tornado. I was injured and my car was crushed, putting more burden than ever on my bro’s car that he can no longer keep charged (no garage or even a driveway at the temporary home). It doesn’t help that it takes Premium gas and prices temporarily doubled with the recent pipeline hack.
We’ll never be able to return to our basement workshop/lab so we are trying to resume operations in a rented place where I found the hard way that this NEMA 5-20 outlet was wired for 220v:
Yeah, it fried some equipment. No, it wasn’t hanging out like that but it was surrounded by webs and had no wall plate. The temporary home uses nothing but these same 5-20 outlets wired to 120v so I didn’t have any reason to suspect it was 220v here. Just yesterday I knocked out the boarded up window to install that window-unit AC and might’ve grabbed a more-efficient 220v unit if I had known sooner!
To make lemons from lemonade, I’d like to use the 220v outlet to charge my brother’s car while at the workshop. Heck, I might even have to stay in the workshop until I find a place since the landlord plans to sell once the home is rebuilt. My bro has a 220v Level 2 EVSE and the Volt can only charge at 15A:
https://www.gm-volt.com/threads/level-ii-charge-cord-station-amp-requirements.28297/The EVSE:
It seems these outlets can easily handle it and even GM recommends a 20A socket. My only remaining concern would be others trying to use it for a higher-amperage car. I can’t share our electricity anyway so I will 3D print an outdoor EVSE mount and rig up a lock of some kind.
My remaining questions are:
-Is it OK to use an adapter for NEMA 5-20 to 14-30 as long as I am staying under 15A?
-Should I instead grab my NEMA 14-30 socket from the tornado-damaged home and install it here? Guess I should remove the breaker or cap the wires (wire nuts?) if we go that route.
We had help from an electrician friend when installing this one in the old place’s garage and he’s now out of state so I don’t trust my limited experience without someone telling me exactly what wires go where, especially in this rotting workshop. Yes, that is daylight you see inside the walls there. Damned tornado.