Same busbar

[jxofaltrds]

Is something that was installed improperly 'grandfathered'? I say no.

We are not talking about adding GFCI's or AFCI's or any new changes.

I think the OP was about an unsafe condition. Correct?

The owner of the property should be informed about the hazard. Then IMHO the owner has an obligation to remedy that problem.

"To expand upon what Larry is saying, is we can not make what was legal, illegal."

I do not think that anyone implied that.

 

[Cold Fusion]

Ill try:
Current takes all paths,
Parallel neutral current will be on all the grounding paths.

Voltage drop in the neutral will be on all grounding, to an earth reference or water pipes.

Voltage drop would be high in the event of a line to neutral fault while someone was between a grounded item, and Earth reference or water pipe.

the lose of a neutral would place all the neutral current on the grounding. and make the above much more dangerous, and possibly allow the lost neutral condition go unnoticed for a long time till the grounding was lost.

Again, I agree with all you have said. I just don't see this as any more hazardous than some of the things we are doing now. Let me give some examples:

Voltage drop in the neutral will be on all grounding, to an earth reference or water pipes.

The service neutral comes in as both the neutral and grounding conductor. And we bond the neutral to the local ground, and that is connected back to the distribution neutral /ground. So any voltage drop on the distribution neutral/ground shows up on the local ground. Not much change if the N/G are bonded after the main panel.

Voltage drop would be high in the event of a line to neutral fault while someone was between a grounded item, and Earth reference or water pipe.

Okay, let's take a look a the existing system we have during a fault. Say we get a fault from the line to the copper water piping. You are standing outside on the wet lawn with your hand wrapped around the fauce handle. And the CB takes a few cycles to trip. Unless you are standing on the ground rod, I think you just got bit pretty hard.

the lose of a neutral would place all the neutral current on the grounding. and make the above much more dangerous, and possibly allow the lost neutral condition go unnoticed for a long time till the grounding was lost.

This one is one of my favorites:roll:. 250.24.2 (2008) requires two grounding connections to the grounded conductor - no exceptions for solidly grounded systems. The stuff I work on generally has a ground mat, the transformer case is connected to the ground mat, and the building steel is connected to the ground mat - solid metalic connection between the two. The the NEC requirement is to have the neutral current shared between the grounded conductor and the grounding conductor. So by code, what you said is bound to happen:-? Interesting that something so unsafe is mandated by the NEC

Again, I'm not against what you are saying. I'm just not always seeing why this is so much more hazardous than what is normally installed to code.

cf

Note to PCB - Were you going to weigh in on why this is hazardous?