The black wire is attached to the first breaker, the red wire is
Dave N
A white wire can not be used for ground unless marked with green. Tape or permanent marker. (And some inspectors will not accept this) Both the case and the appliance must be connected to ground.
Also the grounding appliance wire(s) must be pigtailed in this case so that the appliance can be changed without disturbing the case ground. The ground wire has two uses in this instance.
The Black and the Red wires don't have to be pigtailed since they have a single use in this instance.
And also again different jurisdictions have different interpretations for these things. Prior work is also has some part of this.
Well, I suppose local jurisdictions do differ. I'm just glad that the local jurisdiction here doesn't require the unnecessary expense of two parallel equipment grounding conductors. In this locale, 240v circuits are wired with /2 cables where the 2 conductors are the hot wires (white marked at the connections with black tape or heat shrink) and the bare (never seen green in NMC) is used as the EGC.
In fact, I was under the opinion, apparently mistaken, that the NEC held the white color code somewhat sacrosanct and required it be re colored if used for anything other than the neutral conductor.
The only time /3 cables are used is for circuits required to supply dual voltage (black and red hot, white neutral) or circuits that include 3-way switches.
I do not know where you live but when you say the black attaches to one circuit breaker and the red attaches to another breaker. That concerns me. You "should" have one 30 amp dual pole breaker. Yes some breakers have the ability to "bond" with a strap or something that causes both breakers to disconnect if there is a fault. Are these breakers "bonded" with a strap between the reset levers? If it is not then you could have deadly possibility of thinking the circuit is dead but still have 120 happening. I did once have a 3 pole breaker that when it popped it did not release all three legs. That was exciting. Note in the tutorial at the end that they show a double pole breaker. This breaker is one unit that connects to both hot buss bars and the trip levers are connected so if one leg has a fault it disconnects both legs. See page 4 where you see the hot busses above the breaker zigging and zagging. If you go to you local Home Depot, Lowes or good hardware store they have breakers you can touch and a panel box. You should be able to see the two separate hot busses there. If you pop out the double pole breaker you should see two separate and distinct buss bars underneath it. Once again your licensed electrician should be doing this stuff but looking at the home center is no risk of life.
Was your electrician licensed?
You should not be dealing with this anymore. Your licensed electrician should come back and show you with his multimeter that all is correct on his wiring job. I lost track of the thread so I am assuming that a professional did the wiring but stating you have two breakers makes me suspicious. I am not an electrician and I do not have the latest annotated NEC book to read up on breaker requirements.
I have had licensed electricians do work improperly. They had to come out and redo their work. I had an air compressor with a dryer that they ran too small of wire. The conduit was pretty darn hot. They pulled bigger wire which helped. I suspect in retrospect that the conduit may have been too small but the compressor ran the few months it needed too without issue.
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I work on my stuff I walk outside the house and I turn of the 200 amp disconnect. When my licensed electrician reaches in to my box to do live work I tell him to wait a minute while I walk outside to disconnect. Even though he does commercial work every day while hot, I don't want fried electrician in my house. A guy blew himself up a few months ago doing live work in our office complex. His helper got a trip to the hospital. Power was out for a few days after that mess. Yes electricity can blow you up. Maybe not literally but with enough amps it can be pretty messy and deadly.
Maybe I should have been a little more specific about the breaker. I was talking about a dual pole breaker. I absolutely agree that two seperate breakers should never be used on a single circuit. My colors may be backwards also. The point I was trying to make was to try to answer the OP's question about the white wire. Also the GREEN safety wire should ALWAYS be connected to the frames. A young man was killed where I used to work due to the motor on a large fan shorting to ground. The fan was setting on a wood pallet and the wiring was not safety grounded. When he reached to restart the fan he became the ground. The electriction stated to me that he always cut the green wire off. This was long before OSHA existed.
As somebody responsible for the sale of GE loadcenters during the above time period, I can guarantee that you could not install a 2P GE c'bkr in an incorrect position in the loadcenter.
Engineering kept emphasizing to sales that this was a design feature and should be pointed out to customers.
You must be confusing GE loadcenters with another manufacturer.
Possible, but wonder if the installing contractor may have played some games.
A proper 2P c'bkr will have a common internal trip in addition to the handle tie.
The insulating plastic that supports the buss bars has stubs sticking up that reject placing a 2P device in the wrong location.
Some c'bkr manufacturers for a while offered a handle tie kit that would allow you to handle tie non GE, 1P c'bkrs together but didn't have a common internal trip.
Breaking off the interfering stop, improperly handle tying 1P c'bkrs are just a couple of the possible explanations.
Without inspecting the hardware, it is pure speculation.
Still here. I've had some computer issues for a couple of weeks. Scott nailed it. Electrician installed double pole breaker incorrectly. My panel allows a double pole breaker to fit in slots powered by same phase lead. I moved the breaker down one slot and it's good now. Saw is running. Electrician's name removed from Rolodex. :-)
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