I attached a photo of a nuetral buss bonded to a ground wire from a supply wire to a subpanel. I know that the ground wires and the nuetral wires are supposed to be isolated on the branch circuitry. Does this play the same for the supply wiring ground to the sub panel and the neutrals on the branch wiring?

Attached Images

P9020801.jpg (53.0 KB, 91 views)

__________________
Lanny Freng
Inspection WerX
"Get the Best of US before your new home gets the best of YOU!"

If this is the service equipment, the grounds and neutrals are bonded in the panel. If it is a panel downstream from the service equipment then the ground is bonded to the panel and the neutral is isolated from the ground.

__________________
Scott Patterson
Spring Hill, TN
http://www.traceinspections.com

garage sub panel. I will write it up thanks Scott...

__________________
Lanny Freng
Inspection WerX
"Get the Best of US before your new home gets the best of YOU!"

Maybe Scott is seeing something I'm not but it just looks like an ungrounded panel to me. I am not seeing any grounding conductors.

ground buss was at the top of the panel. It looks like they tied the ground from the feeder to the neutral buss instead of the ground buss. I dont have a good pic of the whole sub unfortunately.

__________________
Lanny Freng
Inspection WerX
"Get the Best of US before your new home gets the best of YOU!"

Is that the feed coming into the bottom of the panel? It looks like this is only a 3 wire feeder. Is this is a detached structure or attached.

If this was a detached structure with no metallic paths back to the other structure this may be ok. More details are neeed.

I'm with Fritz and Jim, and it's even worse than that.

Forget the "main panel" "subpanel" thing guys. If you would only forget that and think "Is this "service equipment" or is this "not service equipment", then other things would become apparent.

Jim point out part of it. There is no insulated neutral to that panel.

*IF* that is "service equipment", then those conductors coming up from the bottom are the "service entrance conductors", which means that the main disconnect would also be in this enclosure, and which also means that the uninsulated stranded copper serves as both the neutral and grounding conductors.

However, *IF* that is "not service equipment", then that becomes a feeder and that feeder neutral is required to be insulated (which it is not) and there is required to be a grounding conductor (which there is not)

Lanny,

Is that "service equipment" or is it "not service equipment"?

Therein lies your answer, and also answers whether those are "service entrance conductors" (neutral/ground may be combined as that is) or whether those are "feeder conductors" (which requires an insulated neutral).

I suspect that those are "feeders", meaning what needs to be done just got a whole lot more complicated and expensive.

__________________
Jerry Peck, Construction / Litigation Consultant
Construction Litigation Consultants, LLC ( www.ConstructionLitigationConsultants.com )