Looking inside the electrical panel in the house I bought, I was surprised to see the neutral bus bar crowded right up next to the ground bus bar, so much so that it seems the ground bus bar is virtually impossible to access in order to secure grounding wires to it.
The neutral bus is to the left of the ground bus, and it stands slightly forward of the ground bus. You'll notice that the neutral bar is loaded with double-taps - including both neutral and ground wires. I'm not even certain there are ground wires actually connected to the ground bus (it's pretty well hidden) - though as you can see in the lower right corner of the photo, the very thick service ground wire that connects the ground bus to the plumbing and grounding electrode.
Looking at this next photo - the handling of the ground wires pictured has me asking if this is wrong and needs to be corrected?
Here, ground wires terminate outside the panel box, though bonded to it.
As well, a couple ground wires inside the panel box are kind of twisted together, with at least two wires wrapping around a couple of others that are connected at the neutral bar.
I have more photos of the installation, but this being my very first post, I was limited to just two. The panel box is an old Murray Class CTL Load Center, Cat. No. LC 240 PS that may date back to the 70's, when the former owners bought this house. The only information I've been able to find about what it's original intended configuration was supposed to be is a diagram on the panel door that actually shows two vertical columns of screw heads/lugs (side-by-side) that appear to represent those bus bars, numbered like the breaker spaces.
Questions, questions! Were these bus bars installed correctly? How was/is someone supposed to access that ground bus with it being so tight against both the neutral bus and the inside of the panel box? Also, I mentioned the numbering of the bus bar lugs to correspond with the breakers numbering, and so I wonder does it really matter in what order neutrals and grounds are connected to their bus bars?