Garage Sub Panel

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sunsetprez

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Hi everyone. I bought this house about a month ago and in the garage had a brand new subpanel installed. Cool I thought. Im out in the garage tonight setting up my shop to start some steel fab and I notice that this sub is there just for 1 220 plug. I decided to add more outlets so I pulled the cover and it is just 2 hot leads no nuetral or ground wires at all. Do I really need to run a neutral line all the way back to the main to get some more 120 in there or can I run neutral a different way? Maybe to a freshly installed grounding rod?
 
You will need to add a neutral and a ground for the sub-panel from the main panel.
 
Sounds like it is only a disconnect and not a sub panel. If you want it to be a sub panel then you need a new cable or more wires in your conduit if that is how it is wired.
 
So I wanted to see what was going on and decided to check this out before work this morning. I climbed in the attic and found 4 wires coming from the sub panel I followed them up the the roof where the go into the service disconnect for the ac. 2wires run back down and are hooked to one of the breakers in the sub panel. The other 2 feed the sub off of the main power coming into the ac service disconnect. I had a major wtf moment right then trying to figure out why it was done like that. So I went to the main panel and opened it up and there is just no room for an additional circuit. Even if there was enough room it doesn't seem like there is enough room to run new wiring up into the attic with the roof on the house. It looks like I would have to open a wall. I do think I could possibly fish a new line from the neutral bar up intothe attic and grab it with some kind of hook. I'm just kind of trying to come up with ideas here.
 
are you saying that the wires are tying in before the meter? Because that would be a bootleg system and be very careful with it.

how do the two wires attach before the main service?
 
No conduit. And there connected at the meter to the original ac fuse.
 
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE call this guy back and get your money back. Then use it to hire a real electrician to do this work.
If he refuses, threats work well sometimes. Especially legal ones.

DO NOT use this panel. DO NOT run a single neutral wire anywhere. ALL this MUST be ripped out and done correctly!

Take pictures and report this HACK to the local building department. He is going to kill someone!!!!
 
Oh heck, I have to slow down & read more carefully. I thought this was already in the home when he bought it and it was a hack DIY job.
If your telling me that you hired a contractor to install this mess, then yea, call him back and have him do it right.
 
It was like that when I bought the house. I have no idea who did it. I was thinking about redoing it myself because I don't like the way its done. My question I have is where should I tie into my main panel because there is no open space.
 
Make space using Tandem breakers in the main.
You just need to make room for a 2-pole breaker to feed the sub-panel.
 
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