I just saw my first Leviton service panel. I had a newbie (from Winnipeg) doing a ride-a-long with me. So, we had a fun discussion about how I inspect something new. Those white breakers were eye-poppers.
I told the newbie, that we gotta spend a minute looking this thing over. It is a 225amp panel with a 200 main breaker.
But the “anomaly” that has me scratching my head is this…each breaker has a hot and neutral attached at the breaker except two. They only have the hot. There are two orphan neutrals attached on a bus at the upper right of the panel. The two breakers go to circuits with GFCI outlets. But there are several other breakers controlling circuits with GFCI outlets that have both the neutral and hot terminated at the breakers. Tracing the wires was impossible without some disassembly.
I tried to find some instructions clarifying this but couldn’t. I spoke with a master electrician who said he has only seen one of these and has never wired one and did not know if I had found a defect or not. Do any of you guys and gals know if the neutrals for each circuit need to be terminated at their controlling breaker?
The photos are not great. The reflection off the white breakers messed with the camera.
Lon, read up on plug on neutral breaker panels. I haven’t seen a Leviton in my area but every other manufacturers’ panels I’ve seen on new construction are plug on neutral panels. I’m pretty sure the one you see is just Leviton’s design for a plug on neutral panel. How it works is there are separate neutral bars that run from the main neutral bar(near the main breaker) under the breakers. The new “plug on neutral” breakers have a clip on the under side that connects to this partially hidden neutral bar. This really helps with AFCI and GFCI breakers that used to have a neutral pigtail that would clog up the panel and take away slots on the regular neutral/ground bar. The plug on neutral connection basically serves as the neutral pigtail now. So speed of install and reduced panel wire/bus bar fill.
The bold is your answer. Instead of using GFCI breakers they used GFCI receptacles and standard circuit breakers which do not use the branch circuit neutral. If I remember correctly these breakers had a small indicator window with an LED to tell what kind of fault caused them to trip. Something like GF (ground fault) or AF (arc fault) printed next to the window. The standard breakers should not have this indication.
I don’t know but for whatever reason the installer chose to wire it that way. Is it possible that those other circuits with the GFCI circuit breaker and GFCI receptalces also had non-GFCI receptacles?
Definitely. Since I didn’t trip the breakers to see what was on each circuit, I didn’t confirm. There were “GF” and “GF AF” breakers for some circuits. I reasoned that the kitchen, bath, garage, and exterior circuits were standard breakers with GFCI outlets as a convenience to the occupant to reset a tripped GFCI without slogging through the snow to reset the circuit. (The location had gotten 26-30" of snow a week earlier)
I ended up recommending evaluation by an electrician. Since these panels are so rare around here, I can imagine an electrician who is unfamiliar with these, trying to follow Leviton’s instructions making a mistake. Joe’s cut & paste seems pretty straight forward about the wiring.
That would be the “InterNACHI AI Spy Network” operating on this website, which is currently expanding into Nick’s latest ‘pet project’ incorporating AI with Report-writing… using InterNachi Members as his Guinea Pigs!
I shake my head over and over as I read reports. Most inspectors use boiler plate repair/replace comments in their reports for every defect. They might as well, just say “see comment above” for everything. Few inspectors customize their narratives for what they are reporting. Maybe AI will help them write better. So, I am in favor of seeing if AI can help them. Full disclosure, I like what I do and think I have a track record that proves how I do things is good, so I am unlikely to try out AI anytime soon.
I use AI, as if it were an editor, to review and suggest changes for clarity or grammar, typically for commercial reports. There is little or no such need in residential.
