Double-Tapped Breakers and a Floating Neutral Bar Fixed in Brush Prairie, WA

The most important part of this Brush Prairie job is stuff you can’t see in the finished house. What you can see is a cooktop circuit, power for a bidet and network jacks. What mattered was a panel with double-tapped breakers and a neutral bar that wasn’t bonded down. We fixed both, and did the rest while the panel was open.

What a double-tapped breaker is

A double-tapped breaker has two wires under one screw that’s only made to hold one.

It’s one of the most common things home inspectors find, because it’s easy to do. The panel’s full, somebody needs one more circuit, and there’s a screw right there that will close down on two wires.

Here’s the problem:

• The screw can’t clamp both wires evenly. One’s held tight and the other’s loose, or both are barely held.
• A loose connection heats up. It doesn’t short out all at once. It gets warm, corrodes, gets warmer, and eventually burns the breaker and the bus behind it.
• Neither circuit’s properly protected. Now two circuits share one breaker that was sized for one.

The fix is simple. Each wire gets its own breaker, or the two get joined the right way before the breaker. Any panel that’s been added onto over the years is worth a look, and that’s a lot of what panel work is.

The loose neutral bar

The other fix was a neutral bar that wasn’t tightened down and bonded.

In a main panel, the neutral and ground are tied together at one spot, and the neutral bar has to be solidly connected to the panel box. If the bar’s loose or not bonded, every circuit in the house is counting on a connection nobody’s checked. You might see nothing, or flickering lights, or voltage where there shouldn’t be any.

It’s about an hour to fix, and it heads off a whole list of problems down the road.

The rest of the list

With the panel open and the permit pulled, we knocked out the rest of the list on the same visit:

1. A 50-amp dedicated circuit for a new cooktop
2. Dedicated circuits for a smart toilet and a bidet, which are appliances now and need their own power
3. Five Cat6 runs through the house
4. Two bath fans the homeowner supplied, and a new light in the attic
5. Four GFCI outlets where they were missing

A lot of good electrical work looks like this: one real safety fix, plus a bunch of small things that are easier to do while we’re already there. Our guide to when a panel needs attention covers the warning signs.

Got a panel in a Brush Prairie or Hockinson home that’s been added onto over the years? Call 360-828-7143 or have the panel checked before a home inspector finds it.