I smell something fishy....

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bcorbin

Senior Member
I am looking over an old one-line diagram here...and I see a bunch of small 120/240V-1ph, 3w electrical panels fed from a larger 208Y/120V panel. Each large panel circuit breaker feeding a small panel is single pole. However, the main circuit breakers of the small panels are all 2-pole. There are also lots of 2-pole branch breakers within the small panels.

I am wondering why someone would have fed those panels with only one 120V hot. While I haven't personally pulled the cover off, I can only imagine all of the 2-pole branch breakers with one hot landed and an empty pole.

Is this code-compliant? I would certainly never design it that way.
 
The arrangement you describe is very typical for large residential multi-family dwellings here, although I'm not quite what you mean about a single 120 volt breaker.
 
bcorbin said:
Each large panel circuit breaker feeding a small panel is single pole.
Are you sure about that? It may just be drawn that way. Can you eyeball the actual installation?
 
I'm reading the breakers off of a bussing sheet, which clearly indicates the number of poles per breaker.

I'm now being told these are isolation panels (not labeled as such); the application is in a hospital. That makes more sense.
 
bcorbin said:
I'm now being told these are isolation panels (not labeled as such); the application is in a hospital. That makes more sense.

This is normal practice for feeding Isolation Transformers.

Roger
 
try this

try this

Is it possible that the service used to be a 120/240v delta and somewhere down the line the utility may have changed to a WYE, the 2 pole breakers in the main distribution sounds like many delta's
 
LLSolutions said:
Is it possible that the service used to be a 120/240v delta and somewhere down the line the utility may have changed to a WYE, the 2 pole breakers in the main distribution sounds like many delta's

The question was answered by Roger. :)

roger said:
This is normal practice for feeding Isolation Transformers.
 
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