split vs shared ground

[RayV]

Short story made long, my BIL's breaker feeding his pool house kept tripping. The Black wire was causing the breaker in the house to trip so I...

Cut and capped the Black wire on both ends Left the Red wire alone (connected to power on both ends) Taped both ends of the White wire Black and connected to power Taped both ends of the Green wire White and connected to nuetral

The pool house is fed by metal conduit (30 years old) that is not in contact with main house panel.

So now the pool house is 'grounded' via the conduit and the house is grounded but now they are not sharing a ground.

Should the nuetral bar of the pool house now be bonded to the box since the box doesn't have a ground running back to the main panel in the house?

There is zero chance of pulling new wires because of the number of bends required to get to the pool house and the size of the conduit.

[Chris Friesen]

How was it causing the breaker to trip...was it a GFCI breaker? If it was overloading the breaker through normal use, then changing conductors isn't likely to help.

I believe so, yes. However I think you need to also drive ground rods. You might want to check the local codes.

Chris

[Eric9822]

[Eric9822]

What exactly is causing the Black wire to trip the breaker? Have you checked for continuity from the black to the white, the green, and the conduit? As Charles pointed out it is against current codes to re- identify conductors that are smaller the 4AWG in this type of installation. I don't have access to a code book at the moment but the current installation does not sound compliant even if the wiring was not re-identified. You say repulling a wire is not an option but could you repull if you pulled out ALL the conductors and replaced with new in one pull? Another thought is that if the Black wire is tripping the breaker because it is shorted to the pipe somewhere it would be better to re-identify the Black as the equipment ground and re-identify the Green as the former Black wire. It shouldn't matter if it's touching the pipe since they are bonded together anyway. NOTE: That would still violate the NEC but it would be better then the current installation. I'd do a little research in the NEC before I started adding ground rods and leaving it this way.