Aloha! Relatively new home inspector here. I’ve been trying to improve my electrical knowledge as I believe it is one of the most important systems in a home.
I just inspected a condo built in 1966. I am only seeing one bus bar and it looks to me that it is being used as the neutral bus bar. I know that for sub panels you want your neutral and ground separated. The neutral bus bar however does not have a bridge or a crossover tie bar connecting it to the ungrounded (hot) bus bar. I’ve looked all over the internet and cannot find a thing about the neutral bus bar being connected to the hot bus bars. There is also no ground bus bar and all the outlets are reading that they are grounded. Could be a bootleg grounding maybe?! Attached is some photos, let me know what y’all think of this.
I don’t know what most of this means… if you had a neutral bus connected to hot wires the breakers (unless they are FPE ) would trip.
Bootleg ground happens outside the service panel so forget that for our purposes here. I’m 99.99% sure in this case grounding is being accomplished via metal conduit run to/from the panel and within the walls. I know this by the metal compression rings holding the bushings at the panel case and just by the age of the building you give. 1960s was super-common for this. Also, fwiw, an outlet reading “grounded” has nothing to do with grounding of the panel. An outlet will test grounded with no grounding rods, etc. due to the service neutral being bonded to the ground wires (or in this case the metal conduit) at the service.
I’d agree you need more experience with electrical but you’re doing a good job asking questions here. IMO, HIs put far too much effort on electrical and ignore other things. Statistically, claims for HIs missing electrical things is VERY low compared to things like water intrusion, etc. so to that extent you’re doing well (assuming you’ve spent more time on those things).
BUT… what kind of (crap) connection is it… if the panel shows no indication of the paint being removed for full electrical contact? The fact that connection point was drilled in field and is not a factory connection point, makes me want to call it for an electricians evaluation for electrical continuity and correction!
So there is no need for a ground bus bar? I may be overthinking this, thinking that there has to be a neutral bus bar and a ground bar for sub panels. I just want to make sure the client is safe.
The green EGC is for one of the NM cables not the feeder. The feeder EGC appears to be a metal raceway. A ground bar is not always required but is the best solution when there are multiple EGC’s that require termination. If this panel had no NM cable then all of the equipment grounding would be accomplished by the connection of the metal raceways to the enclosure.
Yes the NEC allows this type of field connection but the paint is required to be removed.
250.12 Clean Surfaces.
Nonconductive coatings (such as paint, lacquer, and enamel) on equipment to be grounded or bonded shall be removed from threads and other contact surfaces to ensure good electrical continuity or shall be connected by means of fittings designed so as to make such removal unnecessary.
So a “pro tip”: take more pictures. The outside before you remove anything AND in particular the inside of the cover, along with readable versions of labels. Your next step is generally to look up the model number.
) would trip.
