107
Call the power company back. You lost a pole.
Here's how your house normally works.
Here's what happens when a hot wire breaks.
That's simple enough, right? Half the 120V loads croak. And all the 240V loads... right? But wait. What if they are both on? Say that water heater cycles on.
This. This is why the electrician and the power company read ...
answered Feb 4 at 7:17
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57
Turn off 120V appliances NOW. Call the power company and report an outage.
What you have is a classical "Lost Neutral". The dead giveaway is when circuits teeter-totter: when one pole's voltage goes down and the other one's goes up.
This is the most dangerous type of power outage. If you lose a hot wire, half your circuits go dead until a 240V appliance ...
answered Feb 18 at 22:25
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With your voltages varying that much from one leg to the next, you definitely have a loose/open neutral somewhere. That would also explain the current draw on the ground wire. If the problem exists on all your meters you might need to call the power company back to recheck their neutral connections. If the problem exists on only meter, then recheck the ...
11
This is a potentially-deadly "open neutral" issue because it can create to dangerously high voltages on the OUTSIDE of appliances. I found mine with one hand in the sink and another touching the microwave.
6
Nope!
Siemens QP breakers, with basically no exceptions, cannot be double-lugged the way you see there. Fortunately, this is easy to fix. All you will need is a couple of 12AWG stranded THHN pigtails (one black, one white) and a pair of wirenuts suitable for 3 12AWG wires each, as well as an inch-pound torque screwdriver to set the torque on the breaker ...
6
RED ALERT! Call the power company TONIGHT and report an outage
You have, at the very least, a lost phase. And quite probably a lost neutral.
Now, in most of Europe, this would mean a 100% outage, since their power drops only have 2 wires. America uses 3, which we get a lot of weird effects when 1 wire breaks.
The weirdest effect is a lost neutral, ...
answered Feb 2 at 23:57
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Our first rule of subpanels is Think Big. Really Big.
A 6-space panel might be dirt cheap and cure the itch today, but for a couple of pizzas, you can get a 30-space and cure the itch forever. We really want you to do that. There are plenty of stupid and useless ways to waste money in electrical work, but the one here is going too small and getting in the ...
answered Feb 5 at 21:53
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About two years ago, a landlord came on here and said "I want to get my 2 tenants to split the cost of running the dryer. I want to tap the red wire from tenant 1's panel, and the black wire from tenant 2's panel, so it rolls half on each electric bill. Make sense?" Of course, we had to take our shoes off to count the number of ways that violates the ...
answered Feb 4 at 22:55
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You will just need to shut off breakers to isolate each wire and check it for voltage.
Turn the main breaker off, and check the incoming lugs for voltage. If present, then the power has not been "shut off". With the breaker still off, check the lugs that attach to the sliver bars in the back of the panel.
If there is voltage on the bars, one of the ...
5
This handy chart seems to show that the Eaton CL230 breaker is a "Classified" replacement for the Thomas Betts TB230 breaker.
Since this is a pretty common breaker sold at national big box home improvement stores it should be straightforward to compare the two. These cheaper breakers are normally not even in a package, making comparison even easier.
The ...
4
Neutral and ground systems must be completely separate, that's true. However, that's done for some purposes. First, it's desired to keep hot and neutral wires reasonably near ground potential (i.e. within 120V of it). Second, since hots have circuit breakers and neutrals do not, we want it so that if a wire shorts to ground, a neutral-ground short will ...
answered Feb 8 at 7:32
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I'd do (and have done) Ed's suggestion of up the wall a then LB (or LR, LL) straight into the back of the box. It works, no fuss, no muss.
If you want to come in lower for some reason, I'd stay with PVC on the exterior but transition to a metallic product (EMT, IMC, RMC) once in out of the weather. Among other things, a lot more compact than their PVC ...
4
The crux of your question is covered in this question. Looks to me "no"; The breaker isn't labeled for double lugging, and neither is the panel. However I see other work here that concerns me.
The panel is much too small. It's a 30-space panel and 31 spaces are already used (hence the double-tap). I have a feeling the AFCIs are new, but the panel is an ...
answered Feb 9 at 20:29
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If you have some space between the meter box and the face of the sheetrock (I think you do but pictures can be misleading) then a sheet of rigid foam insulation of that thickness may give you a bit more insulation right over the box than you'd get from that much fiberglass, or just leaving a hole in the insulation over the box.
Should be no issue with ...
3
No, it never works that way. Two 20A circuits don't make a 40A circuit. A 30A breaker does not mean two 15A circuits.
When two 15A or 20A circuits are combined on a single cable sharing a neutral (called a MWBC), they use a double-wide, common-throw breaker like that, but it's a 15A or 20A breaker. It must stay on this style of breaker with a common ...
answered Feb 9 at 9:01
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Edit From your comments and the progression of added pictures it sounds like this is a 400A (Class 320) meter. The last time I did one I had do the ground/neutral bonding in the meter cabinet, run 4 wires from the meter cabinet to each panel, and all the grounding electrodes (rods, metal piping, ufers) had to be run back to the meter cabinet. It looks like ...
3
That right there is what a panel should look like. Note the empty void for a third service wire; that's for 3-phase which means it's industrial grade. The breakers are 3/4" wide; this would only fit 20 breakers if they were 1" tall. It's very, very busy in there, but only because all the wires come in the top hole. It's not anything to worry about. They ...
answered Jan 28 at 22:53
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What you "heard" is incorrect, but Harper's advice is wise just the same.
You can paint the outer cover of the panel as long as you don't obscure any critical labels. Use a good primer and several thin topcoats to prevent runs and avoid filling stamped text. I'd probably remove the plastic latch, mask the opening from behind, and reinstall it later for a ...
3
Talk to an Eaton authorized dealer, i.e. an actual electrical supply house that deals in Eaton. They can check their cross reference book to see if the BR busing is compatible. There's a possibility, since Bryant has lineage back to Challenger which has lineage back to T&B. But the cross-refernece book will tell for sure.
If not, they can get the ...
answered Feb 20 at 21:15
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OK first, the panel has a lot of "double-stuff" breakers (2 breakers in one space or 4 breakers in 2 spaces).
The breaker in 3/4 (right side, top 2 spaces/4 breakers)
Take a careful note of the double-stuff(s) in spaces 3 and 4. Treat those 2 breakers like one quad breaker, keep them together or better, tape them together. Move them together as a unit. ...
2
The "6 KA" number (literally, 6000 amps) is based on being able to trip out at the maximum possible bolted fault (i.e. not having its contacts welded shut by the current). There's really no point having a 25KA breaker when the delivery wires are incapable of delivering even 6KA of flow.
The current capacity of the delivery wires is decided by their size ...
answered Feb 2 at 21:43
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The simplest way is to come up to an outside wall, then mount the panel on the inside wall on the other side. That way you come up the wall, go through an LB conduit body, and into the back of the panel.
You cannot splice inside a conduit body. Or to be more precise, you can, but then you have to satisfy the cubic-inch and bending-radius requirements of ...
answered Feb 1 at 0:03
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You MUST move both the hot and neutral together!
The underlying principle is currents must be equal in each cable or conduit. You can't have a situation where current flows on the hot wire from panel 4 to panel 2, but neutral just ends at panel 2 and takes a different route back to the panel (creating an imbalance in that cable too).
If currents are ...
answered Jan 30 at 2:22
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The question seems to imply a desire to keep the outdoor conduit as low to the ground as possible. Is that correct?
You could mount a NEMA type 1 enclosure inside the wall down low. Use an LB or other right-angle conduit body to connect from the outdoor conduit through the wall into the enclosure. From the enclosure up to the panel you could install a ...
2
In the US the neutral and ground are required to be bonded at the service (usually the panel right after the meter), then isolated after that (except for specific exceptions).
Edit: Current doesn't flow to earth/ground by itself. A transformer winding is no different than a battery, connect one terminal to anything nothing happens. We ground one point of ...
2
Don't try to run a saw and a dust collector on the same circuit
You seem to think a 20A circuit will magically support both. No, it won't. You sink the time, energy and cost into getting that single 20A circuit, plug both in, and you'll get a snap for your trouble. Stop trying.
You need a 15A circuit for the dust collector, and Bob's your uncle. For ...
answered Feb 9 at 19:33
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If the circuit is under normal load - not over the limit, e.g. at 60% of the rate when the ground fault occurs, the sound of the breaker will not be very different from an overload - in case of no shortcut. Especially if inductive devices like big motors or transformers are interrupted.
There is a small chance to distinguish a GF (if the normal load is zero ...
2
If the GFCI breaker pops because of a ground fault it pops softly without a loud sound. When it pops due to an overload you can hear a sharp sound inside the breaker comming from the spark during the opening of the breaker contact
1
I can say that for a Square D QO or Homeline GFI breaker, there's no visible difference. The trip indicator shows orange, and the handle moves to the middle regardless of the trip reason. This is the behavior of the GFI breakers that I have used, but it might be worth looking up an instruction manual for your exact brand to see if there is a hint to the ...
1
Assuming the picture with the circuit breakers labeled is accurate, and going down to the picture of the inside of the panel where breaker 15 is located, it looks to me like that's 14 wire to the breaker. If that's the cable to the garage, then the answer is NO. The breaker on any 14 gauge wired circuit can not be greater than 15 amps.
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