Gentlemen, It’s late and my brain isn’t working right. I know I should know the answer to this, but I don’t. Inspected a house built in '96, underground service lateral, Cutler-Hammer main panel in the basement garage. In the main panel the ground/neutral busses are isolated, but bonded to the panel with a bonding strap and green screw. There’s also a separate, short, ground bus bar bonded to the panel. Is this legit? The isolated ground bus is throwing me off. Any input would be appreciated.
With your concern and what I can see, it looks good to me, Anthony.
I see grounds and neutrals sharing busses in your pics. The extra bus was added after a home inspector called out double tapped neutrals and the electrician had to add another bus to make room to separate all the neutrals on the the two original busses.
As long as only grounds land on the ground bus there is no issue.
Hey Larry, Thanks for the confirmation. It’s been a long week and I’m trying to crank out this last report. I appreciate you being there.
I’m not following you, Jim?
Neutrals cannot land on the auxiliary or add on ground bars. If they did you would have neutral current on the enclosure.
Isn’t the buss above, with neutrals, bonded to the enclosure?
A service would have the neutral bonded to the enclosure. If a hot contacted the enclosure it needs the bond to trip the breaker.
That would be correct in a service.
Going back to your earlier, add a separate ground bar and terminate a neutral on it. How does the neutral current return to the incoming neutral to get back to its source?
Interesting. It has to travel on the enclosure. Can a jumper be installed between the aux bus and the other buss(es) to get around this, or is that a non-no?
It would just create a parallel path and the current would split between the enclosure and the conductor.
Neutrals need to land on the neutral bus only.
Exactly. So with Everything Bonded to the metal enclosure I can’t see why it would make any difference where the neutral and/or grounding conductors landed.
Chris, see my description above and then Ryans answer.
Jim, what about this?
That is a neutral bus. The bond needs to be there if a hot contacts the enclosure. Without the bond the hot energizes the box and the breaker doesn’t trip.
…with grounding conductors on it, too?
Grounding conductors can land on unused holes of the neutral bar in a service panel.