Make sure your countertop outlets are GFCI protected. I don't know what you mean by "interrupted circuit" quite. If you mean that you're going to leave one receptacle on the old circuit and feed the old circuit through elsewhere, that is fine. Hopefully the existing wiring has a real ground. If not, I'd not use the existing wiring at all. With an upgrade of this magnitude, replace it all. I don't believe you're talking double pole breakers (i.e. those for running 240V loads) but rather the provision for certain panels to use two breakers in the space taken up by one normal (either the GE half size breakers or the Square D tandem breakers, for example). There's nothing wrong with them as long as the spaces in the panel are listed for those kind of breakers.

I reread Tom O's FAQ & he states at the beginning it is written for "remote buildings" but at the end he will list items that can be omitted if the subpanel box is in the same building as the service entrance/main panel box which is your case assuming you have an attached garage. Bottom line, the neutral bus bar in the subpanel box should be electrically isolated from the subpanel box enclosure & a ground bus bar should be electrically bonded with the subpanel box enclosure. There is no need to electrically bond the ground bus bar to "earth" ground either via ground wires or via metal cold water pipes, again assuming this is an attached garage to a residence that contains the service entrance/main panel box. Your comment of "That sounded kind of odd since the subpanel is mounted to wood studs. " concerns me to the point that I should really recommend you retain an electrician to fix these problems.

With all neutral and hot leads connected this is what I get 4off 5on hot to neutral = 0v hot to grd = 0v neutral to grd = 0v 4on 5off hot to neutral = 120v hot to grd = 120v neutral to grd = 0v 4on 5on hot to neutral = 124v hot to grd = 124v neutral to grd = 0v the outlet(duplex) in question on fuse 4 has a hot and neutral wire spliced into the hot and neutral wires that are screwed into the receptacle.These wires go upstream to a wall switch for the porch then to an over head pull chain light in another room and after that I don't know Last scenario all wires disconnected at jbox for fuse4 and testing just the neutral and hot wire from the receptacle to the jbox here is the problem 4off 5on hot to grd = 116v hot to neutral = 0v neutral to grd = 116v thanks for any help.

So informative, thank you, Jackie! We lose our water in any power outage. The utility delivers it halfway up the hill, and we must pump it the rest of the way. We get a slow trickle of whatever is currently in the tank which allows us to flush once a day for a couple of days. We go to the YMCA for showers and either eat canned food or eat out. A more widespread power outage would make this impossible, but we live on a hill and have unplanned power losses from time to time. We have one of those electric/gas combination ranges. I had been thinking that it would be better to have all-gas, but since the thermostat would be electric, that is probably not an improvement. And oh yes, neither heater or air conditioner. Again, the thermostat doesn't work. I am quite interested in reducing our energy usage and we have had solar panels for about a dozen years now, but even I thought that the no-gas regulation was seriously shortsighted. My husband Tom does have a generator, but it is a pain in the neck to hook up, so we only do it if the power is out for a while. The freezer gets priority. I sometimes lament the loss of a true landline (not the digital kind), but the assaults of telephone spammers have made them unendurable. I have set my cell phone up so that only people I know can reach me. Strangers can leave messages, but my phone won't ring, and spammers almost always hang up without leaving messages. It has returned sanity to my life. Tom is an amateur radio operator (which is why we have the generator) so we could be in contact that way. I have a hand crank radio somewhere, but honestly I don't know where it is. I certainly would require daylight and a calm mood to find it.