No, that is not how it's wired. There are two panels outside. One contains only a disconnect/breaker for the house. Right next to that is the pool panel, which is wired in on the utility side of the house disconnect/breaker. Wiring goes from the outside panel with the house disconnect/breaker into the garage where the third panel, with all the house breakers is located. I thought most of us were in agreement on that when the thread began.
It's not protected, apparently because it's treated as a second main panel, not a feeder.
Okay. I read 230 several times and could not be sure I understood what it meant.
There is a prohibition against tapping a service conductor. I would guess that means the second panel would have to be a clean run from the meter lugs rather than off the top of the house disconnect?
The prohibition against "tapping" is prohibiting skinning the cable and putting a burndy type clamp on the cable to connect a second cable. That used to be done a lot. The only legal way to do it now is at the lug. In certain cercumstances 2 lugs may be fasteded to one bolt, with one cable connected to each lug. In other cercumstances a bus bar with 2 lugs is required. I don't know what the rules are allowing or requiring one or the other.
olation of 230.2? There's also a rule in 230 that says a service can never be tapped above the disconnect.
230.82. It says you can't connect anything to the supply side of the servi ce disconnecting means. I interpreted that (I know, dangerous) to mean any where from the supply lug of the disconnect back to the meter, so if you ar e allowed a second service conductor you'd have to start that one at the me ter. That does seem a bit in conflict with 230.46 that says you can splice and tap, but only if you follow 100.14, 300.13, and 300.15, and also in co nflict (maybe) with 230.40 that says there can only be one service entrance conductor.
You can tap the service conductors to feed multiple service disconnects. It is fairly common in big industrial installations where they want to break a bigger service into smaller segments. This usually happens in the CT can where the metering transformers are or in a gutter right next to it.. That will get piped right into multiple disconnects from there.
230.82 is talking about other equipment that is not part of the service equipment. You can just look at the exceptions to see that,
In residential the best way to do this would be to buy a multi lug meter base but you could use any listed splicing method inside the proper enclosure. Where you might run into trouble would be if you did this in the service disconnect enclosure and there was not sufficient room.
At this point it is just an academic exercise because I believe we determined the OP was tapped on the load side of the SD.
I am really not sure we even care because we have wandered so far from the original question. ;-)
violation of 230.2? There's also a rule in 230 that says a service can ne ver be tapped above the disconnect.
hat it meant.
rvice disconnecting means. I interpreted that (I know, dangerous) to mean anywhere from the supply lug of the disconnect back to the meter, so if you are allowed a second service conductor you'd have to start that one at the meter. That does seem a bit in conflict with 230.46 that says you can spl ice and tap, but only if you follow 100.14, 300.13, and 300.15, and also in conflict (maybe) with 230.40 that says there can only be one service entra nce conductor.
I just read that and I can see Tim's interpretation. I think that like you say they are taking the perspective of talking about everything looking back from the service disconnect and hence didn't include the service eqpt itself. They should say that though to make it clear.
IDK why you keep saying that it was determined that the OP was tapped on the load side? The only one who floated that was Tim, no one else agreed. What did you see that leads you to believe ther pool panel is connected after the outside disconnect? EVERYTHING I see says it's tapped on the meter side:
From the very first post:
"Main supply wires come out of the ground, go thru the electric meter and into a main breaker panel on the outside of the house that has a single large breaker in it that shuts of the entire house. Inside the garage is another panel that is fed from that main breaker and it has all the individual breakers for the various circuits, lights, plugs, A/C, Stove, etc.
Later I had a pool built and by some means the pool people went into the outside panel and tapped into the electric ahead of the big breaker. So flipping that main breaker to off does not de-power the panel for the pool equipment.
(Particularly probative there is that he says the pool electrician went into the one and only *outside* panel, which contains only a disconnect breaker between the meter and house and that they wired
*ahead* of that disconnect/breaker. He further states that this disconnect/breaker will not disconnect the pool panel.)
OK, so a while ago the breaker in the pool panel that was for the 220v swimming pool pump went bad and it would not stay "on". There was no short or anything. I had turned it off to replace the pump motor (bad bearings) and found it would no longer stay on. Again, I verified no shorts and in fact if I flipped it to on "just right" it would stay on and the pump would run. In mucking around in the panel I realized there was no way to disconnect the panel from the mains and I had no desire to RR the bad breaker with the box live. So I called the local electricians I trust and had them come over to RR the breaker.
(he calls in an electrician because he had no way to cut power to the pool panel)
They said they have never seen a pool panel that did not tap in after the main house breaker and were concerned it did not meet code. They weren't 100% sure but insisted that I (not they, they wouldn't do it), they insisted that I needed to label the two panels (they are side by side) as 1 of 2 and 2 of 2. They didn't want to even have the label in their handwriting but did want it labeled!
(the electricians don't say, "oh, this is normal, you can just cut power to the pool panel by opening this disconnect over here". Instead the y confirm he's right, say they are concerned that they've never seen it done this way, that it doesn't meet code, should at least have labels installed marking the two panels as one and two, etc.)
Again, one can _not_ read NEC by subsection in isolation; one can draw the wrong conclusion (as TimR did here). It is a document in its entirety...
NEC Figure 230.1 graphically shows which parts of NEC Chapter 2 apply to the various parts of the power distribution system. This figure is the "road map" if you will to applying the requirements of NEC Chapter 2.
NEC 230.82 limits the equipment you can connect to the supply side of the service disconnect to certain specific items.
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