How Do I Wire a Food Concession Vehicle?

[Pig Daddy]

Hello HayZee. I hope you can steer me in the right direction.
What I'm building is a step van for holding and vending foods. The foods will be prepared in a separate trailer that we will tow to the locations.

For the duration of the warm months we will be stationary at one location. But come winter, we will head south. Thus the elaborate cabling and connectors ).

I've already obtained the pin & sleeve stuff via eBay for a song so I want to utilize them even though it's a bit of overkill.

The main entrance from the utility companys meter will come into the step van via the Hubbell pin/sleeve connectors. I don't have a cable for them yet, but I'm thinking about 50' ought to cover anything down the road. For 100amp service I believe I will need 2 AWG conductors in the cable but I'm not clear on the cable type (SJ, SJO, ??). I've read some of NEC Article 525, but it gets to be a blur after awhile.

The feed to the trailer will come from a 30Amp breaker in the step vans QO load center. This breaker will act as my disconnect/protection at the step van end. I will have a fused distribution box at the trailer end. I'm not sure yet how I want power distributed throughout the trailer so I'll worry about that later.

Later down the road, there will be a 10kW generator also installed on the trailer. Another reason for the pin/sleeve stuff, so when we go mobile, we can plug right into the generator.

Hopefully, I can fill you in with any info I may have left out.
I am a trained electronics technician by trade so I understand the principals of power distribution and electricity (just don't understand the NEC )

Since my drawings are too large for this site, I have posted them here:

http://www.pigdaddys.biz/wiring.html

Thanks for your help!

Pig Daddy

[HayZee518]

What size pin n sleeve plug did you get? Look at the jacket printing on the rubber covered cable. I believe SJ is rated 300 volts and SJO is 600 volts. Because this is a mobile installation it will be treated as a mobile home in which case the main shouldn't be higher than a 60 amp main. Maybe if you question your local inspector he will allow you the 100 amp rating. Off the cuff I'd say you'll need to run 1/2 EMT with compression connectors to all boxes (surface mounted - handy boxes) A 10Kw gen puts out 41.666666 amps at 240 volts. - So maybe a 60 amp main will be more suitable for you.

[HayZee518]

I copied the jpg-s into my picture file and will work them out when I get home - I'm 350 miles from home - will be there tomorrow - give me your email addy mine is srf12980@localnet.com

[Pig Daddy]

quote:Originally posted by HayZee518

What size pin n sleeve plug did you get? Look at the jacket printing on the rubber covered cable. I believe SJ is rated 300 volts and SJO is 600 volts. Because this is a mobile installation it will be treated as a mobile home in which case the main shouldn't be higher than a 60 amp main. Maybe if you question your local inspector he will allow you the 100 amp rating. Off the cuff I'd say you'll need to run 1/2 EMT with compression connectors to all boxes (surface mounted - handy boxes) A 10Kw gen puts out 41.666666 amps at 240 volts. - So maybe a 60 amp main will be more suitable for you.

The pin/sleeve connectors are 4-wire 100amp devices. My main load center is already equipped with a 100amp breaker, single phase. There will be no 240 volt applications at this time, so everything will run off two 120 volt legs. (This vehicle will use more than 60 amps at peak times, so 60 amp service is not an option.

The branch circuits are already installed using 12-3 BX armored cable and are already behind the walls, so exterior EMT is not an option.

I guess my concern right now is how to treat the wiring of the pin & sleeve connector to the load center, and whether the bonding screw on the load center (that grounds the neutral) should be used or not.

From what I can tell, code says use 2 AWG for 100 amps but the QO 100 amp load center instructions state that the "max wire size for the lugs is #4-1". Does this mean to use 4 AWG THHN between the load center lugs and the pin/sleeve receptacle?

But my biggiest concern is how to properly fuse these circuits. Will everything have to be GFI protected? I hope not becuz those darn things are $55 a piece around these parts!!

Thanks for your help.

[HayZee518]

You can use #4 cable to supply your service. SO, SJ, SJO doesn't come in sizes much larger than 18 ga
You are forced to use "exotic" cables for hard usage portable -