Home Breaker Panel - Riddle Me This!

FastEddieB said:
If that were the case, I would have 240vac across the two wires, right?

I show 121vac, so hot and neutral, right?
Click to expand...

Yup:redface:

Edit....

F should be the white/ neutral.....

B should be the black wire / hot/....
 
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FastEddieB said:
5) Hook black to B with same gauge wire jumping to E
Click to expand...

A y-split pigtail is a bit more difficult to do properly DIY with that gauge wire. If you don't need additional breaker slots that can't be handled by switching to tandem breakers, I'd leave it be with 1 phase bar hooked up.

--Carlos V.
 
N801BH said:
Oops......

But.... I "thought "someone said something about a double pole breaker....

:redface::redface::redface:
Click to expand...
Yes. But only one side was used to back feed into the buss.

Someone really put some effort into getting this thing wired in the most wrong way possible.
 
N801BH said:
Yup:redface:

Edit....

F should be the white/ neutral.....

B should be the black wire / hot/....
Click to expand...

NO,, big time no.

Black wire (single phase) should be at (F) to feed all C/Bs from the buss, (unprotected) but he is back feeding the C/B which will do the same thing and limit the amperage coming in to 50 AMPs as he needs.
 
FastEddieB said:
*I would no longer have a cutoff. Should I maybe install one inline, or is it enough to just switch off breakers individually?
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If I remember correctly, a distribution box main breaker is only required if it takes more than 6 switch throws to kill power to a building completely.

--Carlos V.
 
Tom-D said:
NO,, big time no.

Black wire (single phase) should be at (F) to feed all C/Bs from the buss, (unprotected) but he is back feeding the C/B which will do the same thing and limit the amperage coming in to 50 AMPs as he needs.
Click to expand...


Uhhh.....F is the neutral bus bar connector. Look at his 2nd pic where he removed the backfeed 50A breaker. That's an unobstructed view that shows the proper phase bus connector at E. B and E are the feed terminals for that box.

--Carlos V.
 
Tom-D said:
NO,, big time no.

Black wire (single phase) should be at (F) to feed all C/Bs from the buss, (unprotected) but he is back feeding the C/B which will do the same thing and limit the amperage coming in to 50 AMPs as he needs.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm..

Looks to me the F lug is electrically connected to the neutral buss where all the small white wires are attached...

Follow the bright aluminum plate the F lug is attached to..
 
N801BH said:
Hmmmm..

Looks to me the F lug is electrically connected to the neutral buss where all the small white wires are attached...

Follow the bright aluminum plate the F lug is attached to..
Click to expand...

Yes. F appears to be where the white neutral should go.

The black hot wire would go to E or B.
 
N801BH said:
But..... There are NO wires connected to the 50 amp single pole breakers...:no::no:
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I'm talking about the panel itself. The main panel can have a single pole 50A breaker to feed that 50A 120V single phase panel.

--Carlos V.
 
FastEddieB said:
I had my garage built about 7 years ago by a contractor/handyman/good ol' boy, who also wired it.

In any case, all the outlets and lights and garage door openers have worked fine.

But recently I wanted to add a breaker for an outdoor outlet and I'm a bit stumped.

This is how the panel is wired:

20927727540_d622741b96_c.jpg


Looks like he brought just one hot (black wire), one neutral (white wire) and a ground from our main panel via the upper left side punchout. Wired the hot to the 50A breaker screw at A. This is powering Bus D throughout the breaker. So the two 20A breakers work to supply everything via Bus D.

But the empty slots powered by Bus B provide nothing, having been hooked up to the neutral via terminal A.

Looks like he did it this way to provide a master breaker/cutoff.

Seems like the neutral should have gone to F for the neutrals and grounds, the hot to B and jumped to E (barely visible on the right) where a second hot wire would normally go. That would provide current to both busses, D & C. But with no master breaker.

Any thoughts? Is what's shown in the photo a common way to wire a breaker panel or just jury-rigged and wrong?

Thanks. I understand a bit about electricity and wiring but have not done very much with home wiring before.
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The box is designed to have a 220v feed. The double 50 would have two wires coming in(one probably red) and it would span bus C and D providing 110 to each. The white neutral would go to F. He just made a 110 feed and used bus C with lug B for the Neutral. I think there may be a Code violation here that has to do with bonding subpanels to main panels. I don't remember if you are supposed to Bond or not Bond. He may have it right and by using bus C saved some wire. Not sure. Maybe thats answered above. I didn't take the time to read the whole thread.
 
Unbeliever said:
I'm talking about the panel itself. The main panel can have a single pole 50A breaker to feed that 50A 120V single phase panel.

--Carlos V.
Click to expand...

Agreed..... Altho, who in the hell would do that...:confused::confused::confused::confused::dunno:..

They are feeding this sub panel with a #6 fat wire hot and neutral set up..

They must have used THHN single conductor black and white wires.. that might explain why we don't see a large ground wire that will come in a 6/3 NM bundle...
 
luvflyin said:
The box is designed to have a 220v feed. The double 50 would have two wires coming in(one probably red) and it would span bus C and D providing 110 to each. The white neutral would go to F. He just made a 110 feed and used bus C with lug B for the Neutral. I think there may be a Code violation here that has to do with bonding subpanels to main panels. I don't remember if you are supposed to Bond or not Bond. He may have it right and by using bus C saved some wire. Not sure. Maybe thats answered above. I didn't take the time to read the whole thread.
Click to expand...

:yes::yes::yes:
 
OK, the fire trucks just left...

I keed, I keed!

Seriously, this is where I'm at right now with everything working as it should and a separate breaker for each circuit:

20933768210_4e1605bb85_z.jpg


It sure looks for all the world like the neutral was not hooked up to anything before - as such you guys are right that the return must have been through that unshielded ground wire. :eek:

Remember, I had nothing to do with the original setup. Things just seem pretty loosey-goosey here in the sticks.

Tomorrow I'll get a separate buss and put the grounds alone on that.

You think I'm OK without a disconnect or master breaker here? There is a 50A breaker at my main panel.

One final thought...

How about stripping a bit of insulation off the black wire and running it through the buss terminal on the left on its way to the one on the right? Not now, necessarily, but if I ever need more circuits in the future.

Thanks for all the help so far!
 
FastEddieB said:
It sure looks for all the world like the neutral was not hooked up to anything before - as such you guys are right that the return must have been through that unshielded ground wire. :eek:
Click to expand...

Now that I've had a chance to look it up, given that you had 2 20 amp breakers it would have been hard to pull more than 40 amps, and if the ground wire was 10 gauge which is good for about 30 amps, it would have been hard to start a fire. But, yea, that was messed up.

You think I'm OK without a disconnect or master breaker here? There is a 50A breaker at my main panel.

One final thought...

How about stripping a bit of insulation off the black wire and running it through the buss terminal on the left on its way to the one on the right? Not now, necessarily, but if I ever need more circuits in the future.

Thanks for all the help so far!
Click to expand...

Any potential code issues aside, the 50 amp breaker in the house will do the job.

Any potential code issues aside, that would probably work. I assume you want to strip about 3/4 of an inch somewhere on the wire and not have a bunch of exposed wire running through the box.

Or, just pull new wire and put in a 100 amp 240 volt panel ;)

You might also want to go around with yea olde handy dandy outlet tester:
3prongGEtester1-200.jpg
(with or without a ground fault button) to make sure that the ground /neutral / hot wires are connected to the appropriate prongs in the outlets that may have been installed when the garage was built...

FWIW, all of the outlets (110 and 220) that I put into my garage are GFCI protected. My bandsaw will occasionally trip one, but it reduces the worry of extension cords, outside, wet, etc.
 
Looking better. Like you said, you still have to split neutral/ground.

Anchor those two ground wires away from the feed line terminals on both sides. That's giving me heebie-jeebies seeing them so close to the terminal lugs. While you can electrical tape them, I'm not a fan of that given enough rubbing that may happen on sharp edges of the terminal.

You didn't have to split the double-tap. Your breakers were designed to take two wires.

The 50A breaker in the main panel is enough. Main breakers are mandated for only when there are too many switches to flip to kill power to a building. The main breaker collapses that down to one switch.

Unshielded ground wire wasn't the problem. It was the current carrying capacity that was the problem. ("ampacity" in NEC language).

Remember, that breakers aren't designed to protect devices. They're designed to protect the wiring on a circuit to keep it from getting too hot. It also does that on the assumption that the current on the return is roughly equivalent to the current on the feed. Your original setup had return on a woefully undersized wire.

--Carlos V.
 
FastEddieB said:
OK, the fire trucks just left...

I keed, I keed!

Seriously, this is where I'm at right now with everything working as it should and a separate breaker for each circuit:

20933768210_4e1605bb85_z.jpg


It sure looks for all the world like the neutral was not hooked up to anything before - as such you guys are right that the return must have been through that unshielded ground wire. :eek:

Remember, I had nothing to do with the original setup. Things just seem pretty loosey-goosey here in the sticks.

Tomorrow I'll get a separate buss and put the grounds alone on that.

You think I'm OK without a disconnect or master breaker here? There is a 50A breaker at my main panel.

One final thought...

How about stripping a bit of insulation off the black wire and running it through the buss terminal on the left on its way to the one on the right? Not now, necessarily, but if I ever need more circuits in the future.

Thanks for all the help so far!
Click to expand...
the way that this is wired in this picture you have the white (neutral ground) and a black (single phase) giving you 115-120 VAC. with no floating ground to use the third finger of a grounded plug.
 
Thanks for the input.

Yes, I just meant to carve off about 1/2" of insulation right at the lug.

And I have two of those testers. All I have to do is find them! :mad2:
 
Tom-D said:
the way that this is wired in this picture you have the white (neutral ground) and a black (single phase) giving you 115-120 VAC. with no floating ground to use the third finger of a grounded plug.
Click to expand...

That will be corrected when I isolate ground and neutral at the box, right?
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
FWIW, all of the outlets (110 and 220) that I put into my garage are GFCI protected.
Click to expand...

"Outside" and "wet" outlets are required to be GFCI protected, and I don't remember if it was NEC, or the municipalities, but generally, garages are considered to be "outside".

GFCI isn't required on 220V, though it is a good idea. Only for 120V 15A and 20A circuits.

Square-D does have GFCI breakers, but my garage has the first outlet in the circuit is a GFCI outlet, with the rest "downstream" of that outlet connected to the protected daisy chain port.

Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
My bandsaw will occasionally trip one, but it reduces the worry of extension cords, outside, wet, etc.
Click to expand...

GFCIs aren't happy with inductive loads like motors and the like. In fact, NEC recommends not putting a GFCI on an refrigerator even though it's in the kitchen due to the nuisance trips when the compressor starts up.

--Carlos V.
 
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FastEddieB said:
That will be corrected when I isolate ground and neutral at the box, right?
Click to expand...

You have a ground now, and that's what the plug tester will tell you. You just don't have a safety ground until you isolate them.

--Carlos V.
 
my shop panel. It is a sub panel of the house main service panel. bleeds off 60 amps from a C/B in the house service panel and feeds the 2 phase sub panel in the shop by back feeding a 50 amp C/B with the white on a separate buss,

Red is 1 phase 115-120 VAC
Black is the second phase giving 115-120 VAC.
While is the neutral ground, connected at the house at the white wire buss.
Red is fed by one side of a 50 amp breaker the Black is the same off the other side of the C/B.
All bare copper grounds go to a separate buss grounded thru panel and a ground rod. now I have 2 30 amp breakers installed but not used, all others are 20 amp controlling two plug in circuits, one on the north wall, the other on the south wall, with a GFI in each circuit.
 

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Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
(with or without a ground fault button) to make sure that the ground /neutral / hot wires are connected to the appropriate prongs in the outlets that may have been installed when the garage was built...
Click to expand...

Good point. With the panel being willy-nilly, I would suspect polarity on the outlets will demonstrate the same lack of attention. (neutral/white should be on the long slot side)

--Carlos V.
 
FastEddieB said:
That will be corrected when I isolate ground and neutral at the box, right?
Click to expand...
That will depend upon how each circuit is wired the bare copper wire must be attached to a ground buss. separate from the white or black wires.

the big conduit coming in should have a bare wire attached to the same ground buss that you have all the other bare wire grounds attached to. This makes the main panel and this sub panel common to each other.

Show us the main house panel. is all the bare copper wires attached to the white wire buss?
 
FastEddieB said:
That will be corrected when I isolate ground and neutral at the box, right?
Click to expand...

Just keep in mind... As strange as it sounds,, The ground and neutral are at the same potential and eventually get connected together at the main panel before they head outside to the service entrance......:rolleyes:
 
N801BH said:
Just keep in mind... As strange as it sounds,, The ground and neutral are at the same potential and eventually get connected together at the main panel before they head outside to the service entrance......:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

There should also be a ground rod driven 6' into the ground out side of the building and connected to the bare wire buss by a big copper wire. #6 or larger.
 
Tom-D said:
There should also be a ground rod driven 6' into the ground out side of the building and connected to the bare wire buss by a big copper wire. #6 or larger.
Click to expand...

There is... And minimum of # 2 ground wire.....Out here they require 2- 8' rods driven into the ground and connected to the Uffer ground encased in the rebar of the footer..
 
A bit simpler than Tom's. I had an electrician wire up a 90A subpanel to the garage, and I installed an EVSE. The pigtail on the 240V line was to downgauge "no less than #8" breaker to the supplied #10 on the EVSE. Fortunately, the load box counts as a junction box.

The feed line ground is bonded to the box right at the entry point, and the ground bus bar is mounted on the box.

My county requires both an 8' rod close to the service entry and load center, but also a cold water feed line bond to the same rod.

--Carlos V.
 

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Unbeliever said:
Good point. With the panel being willy-nilly, I would suspect polarity on the outlets will demonstrate the same lack of attention. (neutral/white should be on the long slot side)

--Carlos V.
Click to expand...

Encountered that once. Some fool had the whole house wired backward. Whites were hot and blacks were ground. Told the owners to call a professional electrician because I wasn't going to mess with it. :mad2::mad2::mad2:
 
FastEddieB said:
OK, the fire trucks just left...

I keed, I keed!

Seriously, this is where I'm at right now with everything working as it should and a separate breaker for each circuit:

20933768210_4e1605bb85_z.jpg


It sure looks for all the world like the neutral was not hooked up to anything before - as such you guys are right that the return must have been through that unshielded ground wire. :eek:

Remember, I had nothing to do with the original setup. Things just seem pretty loosey-goosey here in the sticks.

Tomorrow I'll get a separate buss and put the grounds alone on that.

You think I'm OK without a disconnect or master breaker here? There is a 50A breaker at my main panel.

One final thought...

How about stripping a bit of insulation off the black wire and running it through the buss terminal on the left on its way to the one on the right? Not now, necessarily, but if I ever need more circuits in the future.

Thanks for all the help so far!
Click to expand...

Get that F*****g bare ground wire on the right side right next to that hot lug over to the left side with the others!!!!!
 
FastEddieB said:
Tomorrow I'll get a separate buss and put the grounds alone on that.

You think I'm OK without a disconnect or master breaker here? There is a 50A breaker at my main panel.

One final thought...

How about stripping a bit of insulation off the black wire and running it through the buss terminal on the left on its way to the one on the right? Not now, necessarily, but if I ever need more circuits in the future.

Thanks for all the help so far!
Click to expand...

Regarding the first statement, you are correct. All you need is a ground bar. Move the four bare ground conductors to the new ground bar. Route the conductors so they are not running near hot lugs or the 120 volt hot bus bar.

The ground bar image posted below is a Square D product. The two open spaces in the ground bar correspond to the two threaded holes in the upper right hand corner of your subpanel. There will be two 10-24 screws that are dyed green in the package with the ground bar.

It's important to use these two screws. It is a violation of the National Electric Code to use self tapping screws to attach the ground bar. The ground bar must be attached with through bolts or threaded screws that attach to the subpanel enclosure. Since the screws come with the package and the subpanel accommodates the Square D ground bar, it's simple to use the right materials and comply with the NEC.

.

41hs2gi-aSL._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg


.

With a 50A in the house main panel you are legal. Adding a single pole 50A in the subpanel would be nice to have, as you could then deenergize the subpanel without going in the house. However, it uses one of your three pole positions, cutting panel physical breaker capacity by one third.

In addition, deenergizing the 50A breaker in the subpanel without deenergizing the 50A breaker in the house leaves a hot bus bar in the subpanel and the possibility of a dangerous situation. That convenience leaves a hot bus bar and the possibility of injury.

To add circuits, instead of your idea to strip a section of the 120 volt black hot conductor, use double 20A single pole breakers. Feeding both subpanel lugs with a single hot conductor is a bad idea. Although I believe it is legal (don't remember and my code book is in hiding), it is unconventional and could lead to confusion on the part of someone working in the panel. Confusion and nonstandard are bad, someone could get hurt.

Also FYI, any one circuit cannot carry a continuous load (defined as a load operating three hours or more) that is more than 80% of the breaker rating. In this case your 20A breakers cannot have a load more than 16A which is present more than three hours, and the 50A breaker cannot have a load of 40A for more than three hours.

Here's a photo of the double 20A single pole breaker (confusing, isn't it?).
.

1bc22d19-fe6f-4a19-a68f-34eb551bdfea_400.jpg
 
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