can a circuit re-enter the breaker box?

[wahzoo]

Please suffer a fairly green question.

I'm planning a house and I'd like to have a welder outlet in both the basement and the garage. I'm clear about the wire size, type, breaker etc to use. My question has to do with routing the wire.

95% of the house is concrete, and wiring is in conduit (IMT).

My breaker box is in the basement. Conduit coming out the side of the breaker box carries conductors that serve the basement. Conduit comming out of the top of the breaker box carries conductors serving the garage. If want both welder outlets on one circuit, how do I route the wires? (PS. I have only one welder, one plugged in at a time.)

I could run the circuit from the breaker in the breaker box thru the side conduit to the basement welder outlet, then and back track, re-entering the breaker box and out the top conduit to the garage welder outlet. But is this legal?

Can someone give me the NEC reference?

--wahzoo

[zxcvbob]

How about tapping the conductors in the breaker box and running just one set of conductors to each outlet? Put a pigtail of the appropraite sized wire on each terminal of the breaker, then connect both sets of welder circuit conductors to the pigtails with humongous wirenuts or split-bolt connectors wrapped with tape.

If you try it the way you've described it, I think you will have trouble trying to connect 2 sets of wires to the welder receptacle, or not enough room in the box for a splice.

I will be interested in the answers you get about circuit wires reentering the service panel because I have the same situation -- I have a GFCI outlet in a 4" square box connected to my garage subpanel with a short 1/2" rigid conduit. The "load" wires come back from the GFCI into the box where I connect to the wires for the left side of garage and the right side. It is a very neat install unless there is a code violation problem with the load wires returning to the panel.

Best regards, Bob

[Mark or Sue]

Some breakers are listed to terminate two #10-#14 wires on the breaker (Square D QO and Cutler Hammer CH). If you don't have those, then it would be better to splice the two wires together and run a pigtail to the breaker. Running a wire through the panelboard may violate

408.3(A)(3) as follows:

(3) Same Vertical Section. Other than the required interconnections and control wiring, only those conductors that are intended for termination in a vertical section of a switchboard shall be located in that section.

Only way out is to use the horizontal section, or hope that a panelboard is not a switchboard (not sure of that myself, but it may not be).

-- Mark Kent, WA

[nospam]

WHY? This makes no sense.....

Run TWO sets of wire. You should be able to get two of them into the same breaker on each hot lead. If not, use a pigtail from the breaker, and splice them inside the box using those real large wirenuts, and if they are not big enough, use split-bolts and lots of tape. The grounds should be no problem, just use more screws in the box.

You CAN re-enter a breaker box for certain applications, for example, if you have a GFCI outlet that feeds another outlet, and you are using conduit, where the breaker box happens to be in the center. I have also wired a few three way switches using the br. box in the center, where switch wires run thru the box.

Note: You should wrap split bolts with friction tape first, then re-wrap with vinyl electrical tape over the top.

[George E. Cawthon]

I don't know about the NEC, but that doesn't make any sense because the wire would be very long if it runs to an outlet, back to the box, and then to another outlet (you figure the actual length). It would make much more sense to run each wire on a separate breaker, or from the single breaker make a Y to feed each outlet.

[HA HA Budys Here]

Now your breaker box is being used as a raceway. Illegal unless labeled for the purpose.

Why not run 2 completely seperate welder circuits and breakers? They're considered "non-coincidental" loads anyway and won't count in the feeder calculations.

[Chip C]

I don't have the US code for reference, but I believe the Canadian code says that any outlet dedicated to a load over 1500W should be on a separate circuit. You could get all Clintonish over what "dedicated" means, but if an inspector wanted to apply such a rule, you wouldn't be code compliant any way you do this.

I'll also assume that you simply don't have room for two suitable breaker sets. If it is at all possible to install a breaker for each outlet - maybe scrunch up some existing circuits onto dual-circuit breakers? - I'd do so.

And, I am understanding that one big conduit carries all the conductors for the basement, and another big conduit goes up into the garage? Hmmm. That does complicate things.

The welder outlets are probably not engineered to daisy-chain downstream outlets, and it'd be nice to avoid the extra length and conduit load that the backtracking would require.

I'd probably run both circuits back to the breaker box in their respective conduits, but then pigtail the hot wires, inside the breaker box, onto short wires that go to the breakers (plural, I presume it's 240). The grounds and neutrals (if there are neutrals) can all go straight to their buses. I wouldn't be *happy* about putting splices within the breaker box, and I wouldn't expect it to pass code, but in my humble personal untrained opinion it's probably the least evil. Multiple hots into one breaker and routing wires through the breaker box are probably worse, on the scale of things.

And I'd keep the hot wires long enought that they could be wired directly to their breakers if you ever removed one of the outlets, or if a big new panel shows up under the Christmas tree some year.

Chip C Toronto