Forum Title: 3 wire feeder
I've got a customer who is selling his house. He had his home inspection. One of the things noted was a 3 wire feeder to a small sub panel for his furnace. This panel now has 5-6 breakers feeding lights, a waterfall pump with a timer, etc. It is fed from a 200amp sub panel that is fed with 4 wires with the grounds and neutrals separated. Obviously it is a code violation however when I explained to him the fix (cutting, patching, drilling) he decided to put it off for the new home owners. What are the potential hazards of this set-up if any?
Category: General Electrical Discussion Post By: Smith Brothers Heat And Air (Wister, OK), 03/23/2017
Could be problems if the potential buyers have a home inspection; depending on how picky they are, they may ask that things like that be brought up to code as part of the terms of sale. This is especially true if they're looking at an FHA loan, they will want pretty much everything to be code-compliant, if it wasn't grandfathered in somehow.

- Holly Austen (Clover, MN), 03/25/2017

I'm still working on my first cup of coffee. Something is not clicking in my brain. What is the violation? The grounds and neutrals are suppose to be seperate in a sub-panel

- John Boyd (Coleman, OK), 03/25/2017

if you have two hots, (1) neutral, (1) EGC i don't see anything wrong with this installation. Assuming everything is installed correctly.The home inspector may have added the rating of the breakers and saw that the size of the feeder doesn't match the total amp rating of the breakers so he/she called it a violation or a hazard.Then again at the beginning of your post you mention a 3 wire feeder and changed it to 4 wires.

- Guy Dawson (Tappen (township), ND), 03/25/2017

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