I Have Electrical Wires Doubled Up On My Breakers
Stated on our home inspection, the home inspector put that the wires are doubled up on and need to be repaired. What does this mean for the people who are trying to buy the house or sell the house?
This means you have an issue in the panel. It means that the breaker has too many wires connected to it. According to code, it is not allowed.
An Example Of Electrical Wires Doubled Up On In Panel
An example, one of our customers had a GE panel, we took the screws off the panel. We took off the dead front wearing some expensive cow hide gloves to protect ourselves. In this panel, there was a main disconnect with a full 42 space circuits. The issue is some wires were doubled up on the breaker. The panel was full, so possibly the electrician or person who added circuits to the panel cheated by doubling up the breakers, instead of installing a new sub-panel for more breakers spaces.
Why Does This Matter?
According to code, doubling up wires on a breaker is not acceptable or allowed. The reason it is not allowed because it can wear out the breaker, cause the breaker to trip due to over current draw. The breaker was not designed for this purpose.
Solution To Solving Doubled Up Breaker
To correct the problem, we took out the breakers, the full 2 pole 30 amp for the dryer and full 2 pole 50 amp for the range. There was a 60 amp breaker for the hot tub. You can not get a GE 60 amp tandem breaker. They stop and make those breakers fulls. Instead, we installed a 2 pole 30 amp and 2 pole 50 amp on the spine of the bus-bar. This will correct the problem so no breaker are doubled up on and a sub-panel is not needed.
Otherwise, if these special breakers are not available, then a sub-panel would need to be added to create more space for those circuits that need to be added.
Keep in mind, when hiring an electrician to solve your electrical problems, you want to not hire the cheapest but an electrician that can come up with creative ethical ways to solve the electrical issue, that meet National Electrical Code requirements and not cut corners.
