Panel & Sub-Panel

[Joseph Hagarty, CMI]

What were they trying to do here?

[Marc D. Shunk]

The picture of the small panel with the three breakers is a 120 volt subpanel. What they've got there is a 3 conductor copper SE cable feeding it. They've got the bare concentric conductor as the feeder's equipment grounding conductor. They've got one insulated conductor, which is not reidentified as white, going to the neutral bar. The other insulated conductor terminates at one of the hot lugs. They've got a pair of smaller gauge conductors, improperly double tapped and too small to be legal paralleled conductors, going over to make the other hot lug hot as well, to make this a big 120 volt panel instead of 1/2 of a 240 panel.

The real violations are the nonconforming jumper and the unmarked neutral. It is okay to have a 120 volt panel, but at hot conductor would need tapped by approved means to feed the second hot lug. A split bolt in the gutter space or an H-tap would be examples of approved means.

[Joseph Hagarty, CMI]

The guy that installed the Sub Panel also installed the Bathroom Vent Fan.....

[Paul W. Abernathy]

Joseph,

It looks to me they used normal SE to feed a another panel that should be set up like a "Remote Distrubution Panel" but they only wanted to run a SE so they used only (1) side of a double pole breaker to feed the other panel....and since they only had (1) ungrounded leg going over...they freakin jumped it over to feed the other terminal with an attempt to parrallel conductors which are too small to do so......wrong..wrong ....wrong....

So wrong on many levels...I am 100% sure you called this out....GREAT FIND !

Many other issues also......but that setup to the panel on the right is SOOOO wrong....

[Paul W. Abernathy]

Best course of action is to Defer..Defer..Defer.....and I am sure you did that my friend.

[bkelly1]

Sweet find.

[Scott A. Figert]

I did an inspection earlier this yr. that had 9, yes I said 9, sub panels. Two were beside a free standing shower that I could not even get the covers off.
As Paul said Defer..Defer..Defer!!!!