Should the grounds and neutrals be isolated in this subpanel?

Question

I have a main disconnect panel outside by my meter.

I've got the two hot legs, a neutral and a ground wire from a ground rod below the meter coming into the panel. The neutral and ground wires are connected to the bus on the left. The same four wires exit this panel and go into the circuit breaker panel in my house.

The ground wire is attached to the neutral bus. There is also a jumper lug from the neutral bus to the panel and an additional #6 ground wire from behind the wall attached to the neutral bus. That wire is either connected to my copper water pipes or to another ground rod.

I added the grounding bus last year and the green bonding cable. The grounds were originally twisted together and crammed into two lugs poorly screwed into the side of the panel.

Should the two ground wires be moved from the neutral bus to the ground bus and the jumper lug removed from the neutral bus to the panel? Should the green bonding wire be removed from the neutral bus to the ground bus?

Answer 1

Yes, pull the jumper and move the grounding wires

You have a classic "service disconnect outside, panel inside" configuration, and with that, the inside panel is a subpanel. So, you'll need to pull the bonding screw and jumper from the neutral bar and move the grounding wires to the grounding bus in the panel. Note that a grounding electrode conductor run to a subpanel may be a violation of NEC 250.24(A)(1); it's not clear how that code section applies when one has multiple GECs connected to different points on a system, though.