hot neutral in a dead panel.

[klhitman]

just changed a panel box out and the power was killed via 600 amp disconnect and had a hot neutral going in to a piece of conduit. any thoughts on why????the neutral did not go to the disconnect but to a j box in the ceiling. maybe a neutral shared with another panel box????

 

[1969]

Your going to have to trace it back, break it apart at the JB, if you can kill all the power, test for continuity. Actually could be a number of things causing your problem. Metal conduit, a hot wire that has been damaged, going to ground, back feeding into the neutral.

 

[Torque1st]

How did you determine the neutral was hot?

 

[klhitman]

How did you determine the neutral was hot?

It was the only neutral that arced

 

[Torque1st]

That could get exciting.

The reason I asked is that some high impedance voltmeters will show voltage on a line when there really isn't anything but induced voltage from capacitance or inductance from nearby wiring.

 

[MattT]

First thing is write "Caution mixed feeds" on the panel you're working on. Then get to tracing.

 

[klhitman]

we had a panel that had stab in instead of screw in that the panel was made for so they kept over heating and popped out. so we changed the panel out. out of like 10 neutrals only one was arcing and it goes into a j box that also leads to another panel (more than one conduit). so i think that someone in the past tied all the neutrals togather in that j box. wish i had time to trace it but the boss man is a hurry up and just fix it and worry bout it later.

 

[MattT]

wish i had time to trace it but the boss man is a hurry up and just fix it and worry bout it later.

You've got a serious safety issue there. Don't know how bad you need the job but IMO to fix it you need to find the fault. If I got zapped by something like that and found out other folks ignored it it wouldn't be pretty. At a minimum tape the hot neutral off and put mixed feeds on that panel.