Panel wire questions

[Philip J. Cavalcante]

OK ill admit electrical is not my strong point. My question is they installed a new heat pump and in the panel they have larger lines spliced to smaller lines going into a 20amp breaker. Is this OK

[Jeffrey R. Pope]

As long as the minimum ampacity rating of the heat-pump can be adequately served by the smaller conductors, it's good. The data plate will give you the circuit rating.

[Philip J. Cavalcante]

I did that and its fine just never seen that large of a reduction in line size. Thanks as always

[Robert Meier]

Given the amount of tape that they used I would wonder how that actually spliced those two conductors together. It appears that the smaller conductor has been taped black. If it was originally white then that's a problem. Also the two lugs on the neutral bar behind the breaker in question (photo #2) are probably not the type required to terminate on the neutral bar.

[George P. Wells, CMI]

Originally Posted by Robert Meier

Given the amount of tape that they used I would wonder how that actually spliced those two conductors together. It appears that the smaller conductor has been taped black. If it was originally white then that's a problem. Also the two lugs on the neutral bar behind the breaker in question (photo #2) are probably not the type required to terminate on the neutral bar.

As Robert said, the splice doesn't look right and the lugs on the grounded bus are not right. In addition to the amount of tape, the tape was not correctly applied. The only acceptable type of connection in this instance is a compression connector.

The lug on the grounded bus is on top of another screw head. There is a serious risk of a loss of neutral. Loss of neutral is a leading cause of electrical fires. That is a much more serious deficiency than the tap on the ungrounded conductors.

[Jim Port]

I agree with Robert and George that the lugs are not the correct ones that should have been used. However, since the heat pump is straight 240V that would be the grounding conductor, not the neutral.