Can you tie a 20 and 40 amp breaker together?

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camdean111

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electrician
I saw this on a house and suggested a repair for that because it cant be done. But a different electrician said it was fine, and after looking in the code book and online I couldn't find anything related to this. My question is can you do this? It seems like a blatant safety issue. And articles help please.
 
Are you talking about handle ties, if so there is nothing prohibiting it. In some cases you may want to shut off multiple circuits at the same time.
 
camdean111 said:
Thank you, that's kind of what I gathered from looking at the code book. That so weird though, In would've thought it'd be a safety violation.
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Nothing inherently unsafe by handle tie of breakers with differing capacities together, they still will trip independently on a short or overload on one only.
 
Roger, was that a single pole 100A? Or did you just go into your basement and pulled off the handle tie for your double pole 100 and put it across 1 pole of the 100 and 1 of the 35? lol
That action would have created a violation on the double pole100 that needs both poles of the 240V to simultaneously disconnect. Now if you had the ability to not compromise the 100A double pole breaker tie and still tie in the 35, what inherent safety issue would that make?
 
Fred B said:
Roger, was that a single pole 100A? Or did you just go into your basement and pulled off the handle tie for your double pole 100 and put it across 1 pole of the 100 and 1 of the 35? lol
That action would have created a violation on the double pole100 that needs both poles of the 240V to simultaneously disconnect. Now if you had the ability to not compromise the 100A double pole breaker tie and still tie in the 35, what inherent safety issue would that make?
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It was a two pole (one side 100 and the other 35) one of our guys found on a job, I don't know what it was connected to or even if it was connected to anything at all. He brought it back to the shop and I took a picture. It was riveted together but I suspect someone did it for fun.
 
roger said:
It was a two pole (one side 100 and the other 35) one of our guys found on a job, I don't know what it was connected to or even if it was connected to anything at all. He brought it back to the shop and I took a picture. It was riveted together but I suspect someone did it for fun.
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Do you know the mfg? It certainly is an oddity if this is OEM. Have you tried to validate the origination from the mfg or possible application?
Did see an old one online a 3pole 277V that was 2-35A and 1-100A in one, it was made by Airpax.
 
camdean111 said:
I saw this on a house and suggested a repair for that because it cant be done. But a different electrician said it was fine, and after looking in the code book and online I couldn't find anything related to this. My question is can you do this? It seems like a blatant safety issue. And articles help please.
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No safety issue.

If the 20A breaker has an over-current or fault situation, it will still trip, it will just shut the 40 off as well.

Same other way around.
 
Fred B said:
Do you know the mfg? It certainly is an oddity if this is OEM. Have you tried to validate the origination from the mfg or possible application?
Did see an old one online a 3pole 277V that was 2-35A and 1-100A in one, it was made by Airpax.
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It was an ITE. The reason I'm pretty sure it was a joke was if you look at the 100 side it says "common trip" whereas the 35 does not.
 
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