Electrical – Shed subpanel wiring

electricalsubpanel

I have a portable building about 50 ft away the house. I had an electrician come run a feeder to a subpanel in the shed. Looks like he tapped off of my Generac Transfer switch. When I opened up the subpanel in the shed I noticed there are 2 hots and a small bare ground coming in. Is there a reason why he did not run a Neutral? I only paid him to run the feeder and I was going to run the 2 circuits in the shed to the subpanel (2 shop lights and 4 outlets). Do I need to treat this subpanel as a Main? enter image description hereenter image description here

Best Answer

Stop payment on the check

This guy is not a real electricion. This work is a hack job, with shortcuts all over the place that are insanely dangerous, and have never been legal, ever.

I guarantee you no permit was pulled, either. The inspector would not have signed off on this.

Subpanel connection pretends neutral=ground. Dangerous!

On the subpanel connection, the person is completely ignoring "Neutral is not ground" and doing something that was never legal, using the ground wire as neutral. It will kinda sorta "work", but if anything goes wrong with that ground wire, it will electrify every ground in the shed, and possibly, in the house. It's much worse than the old NEMA 10 killer.

No ground bars in the subpanel

Hello! Neutral and ground need to be separated in the subpanel. Ground bars are like $6, so this was a very cheap negligence.

I'll lay dollars to donuts there's no ground rod, either.

No disconnect in the shed

There's no main breaker in the shed - that's the usual way you install a disconnect switch for an outbuilding.

The panel is UNFUSED, WTH!!!!!

The feed cable to this subpanel has no fuses whatsoever. Nothing will keep this cable or subpanel from exploding into flame.

This is just not giving a damn. Negligence of staggering proportion.

The panel is double-tapped

Those lugs that the wires are hung onto -- are not made or rated for two wires. You can only put 1 wire per lug.

This is the bare minimum rigging to get it to barely work. I'd exepct this type of work in Kowloon City or Bangkok. Faked it and hoped you wouldn't notice. I would actually talk to the AHJ and warn that this clown is operating in your town.