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Electrical Wiring

Additional ground bus bar

16 years ago

I'm moving into a house that has a PACKED breaker box. The neutral and ground bus bars are overstuffed. There are multiple neutrals landed in the same terminal, etc. I'm hoping for a solution where I can add an additional busbar. The box is a 24 breaker siemens type. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

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Comments (4)

brickeyee
16 years ago
You can easily add a groundING bus bar.
No neutrals (groundED) conductors can land on this bar.
Neutrals are one per hole.
Some bars are listed for more than one groundING conductor per hole.
You should also count the number of breakers.
The limit is 42 devices (NOT including the mains).
240 V devices count twice.
itsunclebill
16 years ago
Is this a sub panel? If not, the neutral and ground buss bars can be used for landing either ground or neutral connections. Typically, Siemens buss bars are rated for 3 grounds each. It's not common for a panel not to have enough room to terminate all the neutrals and grounds, even if full, but some older panels are a bit shy of spaces.

If this is a main panel then adding an additional buss may just be a matter of obtaining another buss and screwing it in, or removing an existing one from the panel and installing a longer one.

If this is a sub-panel the issue gets complecated due to the requirement of the neutral being separate from the ground, requiring a mount that isolates the neutral from the box.
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You always want to keep the current carrying grounded conductor (neutral) separate for the equipment grounding conductor (ground). This is because the grounding conductor wants to provide an "express" path back to ground and if it were carrying any part of the normal circuit currents this would be impeded. [I'm simplifying the electrical theory here lest anybody jump on me.] Now there is ONE place in your house where the grounded conductor is connected to the real grounding system. That's at the house's main disconnect, which is in many cases happens to be the main panel. in that case they can share the bus bar because even if you had two, they'd be bonded together at that point.
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bemis
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks for the input. It's not a sub panel. I added an additional ground bar and landed the bare grounds there. Tied it to the main busbar with 6AWG. No neutrals landed there. It's amazing how much room a poorly wired layout takes up. Cleaning this up was just the ticket.

Thanks for the input. Please let me know if I've done anything questionable.

Cheers
brickeyee
16 years ago
"Tied it to the main busbar with 6AWG."

Not required if the bar is mounted to the panel with the correct machine screws.
There should be some extra tapped holes for an additional bar.
A bar not fitting in the supplied holes would be a flag that it is not correct for the panel.

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