Electrical – Dryer & Stove share breakers in 1972 apt

circuit breakerdryerelectricalelectrical-panelsubpanel

Question1: Why would one hot from the stove be wired into the dryer breaker and one hot from the dryer be wired into the stove breaker? Each has a separate neutral and both are grounded with their individual FMC metal flex conduits to the subpanel (no separate grounding wire).

Question2: Why is the dryer wired into a 40Amp breaker?

I opened up the 125Amp subpanel in apartment. I was shocked to see that one hot, black, from the stove, into the 50Amp breaker, but the other hot, red, ran into the 40Amp dryer breaker! The dryer had one hot, black, running into the 40Amp dryer breaker and its other hot, red, running into the 50Amp stove breaker! The dryer outlet is 30Amp and the stove outlet is 50Amp. The dryer is listed as 30Amp requirement.

Any advice would be helpful on any portion of this,
Thank you!

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Best Answer

One of the serious sparkys will know every detail about your panel, but it's obvious from the labeling that it has a pair on each phase, so the location of your 40 and 50 A dual breakers needs to shift down (or up, for the 40 that will be a 30 when you fix it right) by one space to actually supply 240V.

Which means someone highly unqualified has been working in this panel; there may be other problems I haven't spotted. That one is deer in the headlights blindingly obvious.