All Breakers on left side of bus

[mcotten]

I inspected a panel that had all the breakers on the left side of the bus bar, except for the a/c breaker. I have always seen the panel balanced with breakers on both side of the bus bar. Is this a problem? There are 19 breakers on the one side.

Thank you
Michael

[Paul W. Abernathy]

Michael,

Not really....ODD but not really a problem as the bar to these breakers is staggard ( or it SHOULD be ) anyway.

[mcotten]

Thank you I didn't think it was a problem. Home owners father in law was concerned. Thank you.

[Steven Taylor]

It only would have been a prblem if they were on the same side and skipped every other breaker.

[Paul W. Abernathy]

Steven,

Why would this be a problem?

The service should be able to handle this installation, grant it odd but the Ungrounded Conductor will have no problem handling it and the "Grounded" conductor should be sized fine to handle it. Only because if skipped you are looking at like...10 breakers only...lol if on one side.

We are not talking about massive unbalanced issues like in 3 phase systems in this case.

In his case....would not be possible with todays 42 OCPD limitations . Now in 2008 the 42 OCPD limitations will be removed from what I understand and then could be possible issues. But it is the responsibility of the EC to calculate the loads before applying the service...now how many actually do that is always a issue.

[tneumann]

I would like to see this....

[Paul W. Abernathy]

lol.....Steven I did see a guy one time make a attempt to put EVERYTHING on one leg of the service. I mean he skipped every other one and did the same on each side and only had 20 breakers in the panel but they were all on one leg.

Because in order to do this they were single breakers and limited to 15 and 20 circuits it was not as much a problem...but COULD be I guess if someone did it for a reason and then made an effort to overload the circuits but again you REALLY have to work at it.

I asked him WHY he did that and he said to me in a straight face, " I thought that if you only had 120V loads they all had to be on the same phase"......My reply was..........NOPE...

[rcooke]

Originally Posted by pabernathy

lol.....Steven I did see a guy one time make a attempt to put EVERYTHING on one leg of the service. I mean he skipped every other one and did the same on each side and only had 20 breakers in the panel but they were all on one leg.

Because in order to do this they were single breakers and limited to 15 and 20 circuits it was not as much a problem...but COULD be I guess if someone did it for a reason and then made an effort to overload the circuits but again you REALLY have to work at it.

I asked him WHY he did that and he said to me in a straight face, " I thought that if you only had 120V loads they all had to be on the same phase"......My reply was..........NOPE...

Saw a 3 phase 208 the person had skipped every third breaker .
Worked but wrote it up as needing immediate replacement .
What some people will try and do to save a dollar.
Roy Cooke
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[Paul W. Abernathy]

Yeah...like I said before... on 3 phase you can have some serious issues when someone does that and it can play HAVOC on the transformer trying to deal with it.

Now compound that if the transformer is a "on-site" model and sized by the EC, now unbalance it and WHAMO......rapid transformer replacements will be needed.

Not so much the case in single phase because we are limited..RIGHT now anyway....

[Thomas H. Dietrich]

Originally Posted by rcooke

Saw a 3 phase 208 the person had skipped every third breaker .

I've seen the 'skip' the high leg often in some commercial installations. Did you flag this because it was only a single phase install?

tom

[Greg Fretwell]

You better see them "skip" the high leg every time if this is center tapped delta. Usually they install a single phase panel for the 120v

[Paul W. Abernathy]

lol....I can picture it now greg.....they use a 3 phase panel and SKIP breakers and put all the 120V ( intended anyway ) on the 208 High Leg and WHAMO....

Who gets that BILL....

[Greg Fretwell]

We have a lot of "2 transformer" red leg in Naples. You have to be careful.

[rcooke]

No up here we have in industry a lot of three phase 4 wire system star hook up 120 volt to neutral 208 between any two legs.
We also in industry use a lot of 347/600 volt systems .
The only place 440 volt is used is in the auto plants.

Roy Cooke

[Steven Taylor]

That would be an unbalanced panel. Good practice is to have each phase balanced.