Electrical – wrong with this panel wiring

120-240velectricalsubpanel

I have a main breaker panel downstairs, and a subpanel upstairs. After I hired an electrician to rerun the service entry cables, nothing upstairs is right, and all the upstairs lights blew as soon as they were turned on.

Testing with a multimeter, I'm reading 240V from hot to neutral on all the outlets upstairs. I get the correct reading downstairs, 120V, so the problem seems to be the subpanel wiring.

I don't see any mistakes in the subpanel. Everything looks normal to me: no double-tapping; these are all single pole breakers; the neutrals and grounds are isolated from one another. What could be causing a single pole breaker to provide 240V? There must be something obvious I'm missing.

Here is the disconnect for the panel upstairs:

Disconnect for subpanel.

Here is the panel:

Subpanel, upstairs

Multimeter readings: hot to neutral: 240V. hot to ground, 120V.

Best Answer

I've labeled your image, to help you understand what's going on.

Labeled image

Off to the left, the grounding electrode conductor enters the box and terminates at the grounding bar. The feeder coming in the top of the disconnect has three wires, two ungrounded (hot) conductors, and a grounded (neutral) conductor. The two ungrounded (hot) conductors terminate at the disconnect, as they should. The grounded (neutral) conductor terminates at the grounding bar, as it should if this is where the service is grounded.

The feeder leaving the bottom of the panel has two ungrounded (hot) conductors, which terminate at the disconnect as expected. The grounding conductor terminates at the grounding bar, as it should. And the grounded (neutral) conductor terminates at the neutral bar. Unfortunately, since this appears to be where the service is grounded, the grounded (neutral) conductor from the lower feeder should be connected to the grounding bar.

As it's wired now, the grounded (neutral) from the lower feeder is connected to an isolated neutral bar. Which means that the grounded (neutral) conductor feeding the panel is floating, or not electrically connected to ground. Without a reference to ground, the voltage potential between either of the ungrounded (hot) conductors and the neutral can be anywhere between 0 - 240 volts.

Solution

Service grounding location

If the disconnect panel is where the service is grounded, you should move the white wire from the lower feeder to the grounding bar. Or you could bond the neutral bar to the grounding bar, using an appropriately sized conductor.

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Not service grounding location

If this is not where the service is grounded, you should move the bare conductor from the upper feeder to the neutral bar.

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Based on what you've said in comments; and because it's a 3 wire feeder and not a 4, it appears that this is where the service is grounded.