Wayne Whitney wrote:
In article , Wayne Whitney wrote:
4) I'd like to run two 120V circuits. What are the pros and cons of
having them share a neutral versus having separate neutrals?


I believe I've figured this one out--since the circuit will require
GFCI protection, using a shared neutral would require an expensive
240V/120V GFCI breaker. So to use 120V GFCIs, I'll have to use
separate neutrals.

True. Here's why: Because you are in a basement, you'll need GFCIs.
This means either a GFCI breaker (big $$$), or an outlet GFCI. But
you want two circuits. This either means you get a 2-pole GFCI
breaker (about $100), and then you can run a single neutral, or you
use two outlet GFCIs. But if you use two outlet GFCIs, you can not
merge the neutrals back together again.

In our case, we were forced to wire with a single neutral, because I
wanted to use plugstrips (made by Wiremold), and those have a single
neutral and two hots. So we were forced to use the $100 2-pole GFCI
breaker. Compared to the other costs of finishing the whole basement,
and building the woodshop, the cost of the breaker is insignificant.

In article ,
zxcvbob wrote:

You would not necessarily *have to* use separate neutrals. You could
use separate GFCI's.

Yes, but you can only use the separate neutral until you get to the
first GFCI in the daisy-chain. After the GFCI (that is, on the load
side of the GFCI), you can't merge the neutrals back together. If you
try, the GFCIs will trip all the time. So the suggestion of a single
neutral with cheap outlet-style GFCIs only works if you never use the
load side of the GFCIs. And if you want to have lots of outlets, the
GFCIs will add up.

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