Can I take a 220 a/c outlet and convert to two 110 outlets? Breakers would have to be separated.
Thanks in advance

Yes. That exact thing is done in kitchens sometimes, where 2 20A 110V circuits are required for the outlets. The black hot and red hot wires are wired to every other outlet, and the white neutral and green ground are wired to every outlet.

Thx loosegoose!

Certainly would work but I believe you would want the breaker bonded if using single pole breakers, one trip, both trip. Or a 2 pole breaker. You wouldn't one to fault and have the other phase putting load on the shared neutral if in use.
I am not an elecrician

Ok this is from my electrical engineer grandpa I texted him cause he loves to figure out stuff like this.

Ignore the part where it says don’t mess with this on your own I think he might have thought I was going to be doing it

Took me a minute, but I Found what I was looking for. It's called a multi-wire branch circuit. Here's a link with some info, including code info.

multi wire branch circuit

Thanks for all the replies!

No problem

Not code acceptable. You cannot share a neutral between 2 phases. The neutral is considered a load carry conductor. Reason to this is if 1 circuit breaker is tripped the neutral would still carry the current of the 2 circuit.

Not sure about the code compliance, but seems to me you could use existing wiring........swap out the 220 breaker to a 110 breaker using black hot, neutral and ground, then run two outlets in series as with any standard circuit. The second 220 hot line.......red wire if there is one......goes dead.

Like this?

Yes, except to avoid confusion, would pull the 220 breaker, and assuming #10 wire, would install a single 20 amp 110 breaker and a blank filler. Then use 20 amp outlets. Might tape the red and black wires together in the service panel to indicate they had once been used together, but then put wire nut on both ends of the red wire. Rigged that way, they could be put back to 220 use at some point in the future.

Totally acceptable. Take the red wire in the panel and double it back on itself and tape close along with wire nutting the dead end in the first outlet/junction box. I go 1 step further and label the wire as dead leg on the white outer cover if you can. I always give the next electrician who follows my work a heads-up on what they are looking at.

yeah and i would recommend running it in parallel like you have it and not series. This small application would be okay for series but never wire residential in series. Looks good to me man!

failure modes get funky and dangerous.
For example, if the neutral wire breaks, and you have a load on both outlets, but an uneven load, each outlet will 'see' something different from the 120 they should see. For simplicity, assume there's a motor on each outlet and one of them draws twice the current as the other, and the nuetral breaks. Without the neutral carrying load to the breaker box, you've got 240 across the pair of motors in series, but one has twice the resistance of the other. So one sees 80v and the other sees 160. If either shuts off the other shuts off too. This is unlikely, but possible.

Another thing to keep in mind: it is critical that the two hot wires come off different legs in the breaker box. With them coming off different legs, the neutral only carries the imbalance (the critical point is: the neutral never carries more than the hot wire). If a few years from now someone rearranges the wires in the box and now the two hots are on the same leg, the neutral is carrying the sum of both hot wires instead of the difference. i.e. it can carry up to double what its rated for. That can very easily burn your house down.

When my dad was considering running a wire across a field, I suggested he buy 12/3 instead of 12/2, specifically for this reason. For slighly more money, he could have twice the power available. But you do need to be careful with it.

Problem is 220 for ac doesn’t have 4 wires. Unless guy that ran it wasted money. 10/2 plus ground is what most electricians run for ac. Just put a 20 amp single pole breaker in. Take the white that was used as the second leg and move it to the neutral. It’s a 110 circuit up to code

If you’re feeding a 220 circuit legs off one single pole breaker you need to be a plumber!!!