Neutral required to be run to a disconnect?

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Hello Hurk

I wish we had Instructors like you when I went to Electric school.Most wouldn't have a clue and if they did they wouldn't try to explain it.

I have been told like most in the trade that anytime you have a neutral feeding a multiple circuit to a disconnect
you need to run a neutral with it.

So I tried to come up with a reason in this old twisted mind of mine why. After thinking more about it I thought well if I did run a neutral to my disconnect to and from it in one conduit I would not run it back to my
J. box in the same conduit I would splice in the J. box and dead end it in the disconnect.This would not do any canceling if I ended it in the disconnect.Even with multiple circuits it wouldn't make any difference.It would be just
like a light switch loop as Roger said.

I agree with you and Roger 100 percent you do not need to run a neutral to the disconnect if you do not need it in the disconnect.

Thanks for clearing this up for me even if I am retired: Ronald
 
Neutral not needed to be run in the OP situation.

Some exceptions may/will be

Disconnect happens to be a 2 pole GFCI breaker - think hot tubs on this one.

Disconnect happens to be required to switch the neutral also as is required in some hazardous locations.
 
Hello Ronald, good to see you back on the forums.

Roger
 
Hello Roger

You know me I visit about every day as a guest everyonce in a while I take
a notion to post. Maybe a bad Idea this time, but then again thats what makes
a good discussion of the subject.

Thanks:Ronald
 
hurk27 said:
if all the current that flow into a raceway is returned by the same raceway any current fields are canceled out because current flowing to the disconnect will be 180 deg. out of phase with the current flowing out of the disconnect, [etc. etc.]
Click to expand...

Right.

After I posted my last reply I realized that it doesn't matter how much current flows on the neutral. The pipe that goes to the disconnect goes back to a j-box, and that's where the circuit goes two ways (to the inverter and the panelboard), with the neutral present in those two raceways. In all three pipes the current going one way is equal to the current going back the other way. That's the way it would usually be and I have difficultly thinking of how or why it wouldn't be that way.

I ended up running the neutral to the disconnect in this case, and it wasn't much additional work, but next time I'll argue about it.
 
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