Pigtails in the Panel

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Irving LaRue

Irving LaRue

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Location
Fairfax, Virginia
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Electrician Apprentice
Hello Mike Holtians!

My master electrician and I went to a customer’s house to correct issues created by a handyman. Customer sold his house and needs to make corrections per home inspection. So he brought in a handyman to fix electrical issues.

The customer has an overloaded, split bus Cutler Hammer panel from 1979. The inspector pointed out that he had 2 neutral wires under the same screw on the neutral bar. The handyman’s solution was to pigtail a 2 neutrals together inside a wire nut and run the single wire under the screw. There was probably 5 of these pigtails in the panel.

He also twisted a few of the ground wires together and crimped them under a crimp sleeve, then ran a single wire underneath the neutral/ground bar. As you can imagine, this created quite the “bowl-of-spaghetti” effect in the panel. However, there’s now only 1 neutral under each screw.

My master electrician told the customer this wasn’t up to code and needed to be corrected. The homeowner resisted and claimed that he looked up the code and it was ok. I’m not sure what to think about this one. I’d love to hear some words of wisdom and code citations from you all. Thanks for the help.
 
As far as the neutrals I would call it a violation of 200.6.
As far as the equipment grounds, seems to be ok (other than using a white pigtail)
 
Pigtailing two neutrals only works if you're sure the two circuits are powered by opposite lines, so the pigtail only carries the difference current and not additive current.

Did the inspector mention that the four 1-pole breakers up top make the panel exceed the 6-handle maximum for non-main-equipped panels?

As for grounds, a single pigtail as large as the largest one could theoretically be used for every circuit.
 
I see nothing inherently "wrong" with what was done. It might look bad to you, but that is not a code violation.

As long as the conductors are sized properly, and the correct color, the pigtails are acceptable, IMO.
 
LarryFine said:
Pigtailing two neutrals only works if you're sure the two circuits are powered by opposite lines, so the pigtail only carries the difference current and not additive current.
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In a sense the pigtail could be viewed as part of a multiwire branch circuit, although it would be a very short one.
 
synchro said:
In a sense the pigtail could be viewed as part of a multiwire branch circuit, although it would be a very short one.
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I would say that if it was done by an electrician not a handyman then they would probably make sure to use alternating phases so to avoid over heating. Again this could be fixed with a nuetral bar kit for that panel and not be expensive. When it came out they sized the nuetrals to be multiwires so no enough spaces for singles. Those are the larger lug size what was CHs instructions at that time. Was this the rare situation where those lugs were rated for 2 nuetral conductors.
 
Violation. 300.13. The handyman has created a 'tap'/splice of a grounded conductor. "unless permitted by 300.15;"

I consider this a more dangerous situation than before. IMHO the way it existed was most likely safe(r).
 
The correct fix would be to land every neutral in its own terminal first, then combine EGCs as necessary to connect to the remaining holes.

Example: join all #14s into one or two #14s, all #12's into one or two #12s, everything larger gets its own terminal.
 
petersonra said:
I see nothing inherently "wrong" with what was done. It might look bad to you, but that is not a code violation.

As long as the conductors are sized properly, and the correct color, the pigtails are acceptable, IMO.
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If they were connected as MWBCs the would have to comply with 210.4 and simultaneous disconnects.
 
wwhitney said:
So then handle ties would be required. : - )


I think you mean 200.4? Otherwise upsized pigtails would be fine for the case that the corresponding ungrounded conductors don't form an MWBC.

Cheers, Wayne
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200.4 in '17
(A) Installation. Neutral conductors shall not be used for more than one branch circuit, for more than one multiwire branch circuit, or for more than one set of ungrounded feeder conductors unless specifically permitted elsewhere in this Code.
 
Typically, if this was discovered by a home inspection, the language will say something like "work to be done by a licensed electrician".
 
petersonra said:
I see nothing inherently "wrong" with what was done. It might look bad to you, but that is not a code violation.

As long as the conductors are sized properly, and the correct color, the pigtails are acceptable, IMO.
Click to expand...
Pigtailing the neutrals isn't correct, unless, as already been mentioned, they are from different legs on the panel.
Suppose you had two neutrals from the same leg, but different circuits, each circuit was pulling 20A, the neutral could possibly have 40A running through it.
 
I see what was or is an overheated main neutral return due to the discoloration and you can almost see the results of arcing at the lug.
 
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