"Michael Roback" wrote in message
...
The Neutral and Ground bus in a subpanel that was installed in a remodel
are
not connected, however the guy left the bar bolted into the neutral bus
and
left the other side hanging without a bolt. Basically, he did not bolt
the
bar down onto the ground bus. When the electrician that I currently have
looked at it, he said that it needed to be connected and stated what the
correct bolt size for it would be but I cannot remember. It is a
subpanel.

What bar are you talking about? The bus is a bar with a lot of holes in it.
You should have two of them; one for all the grounds, and one for all the
neutrals. They are bolted to the breaker box. I am not sure what you mean
when you ask if the bar should be bolted to the bus.

The main panel with a main breaker sits out in front of my house and the
subpanel is inside with all of the individual circuit breakers in it, in
additon to the main for that panel. Should it be connected or not?

Should what be connected or not?
Oh, wait a moment. Are you saying you have a main breaker outside and all
the circuits go to the subpanel inside?! If so, it is not really a
subpanel. Where do your ground connections (water pipe, grounding rod...)
go; to the panel inside or outside?

The old electrician who was a builder/electrician who did the remodel also
left notes saying that an future electrician should split the 3 and five
wire branch circuits to each leg of the incoming power and panel bus to
prevent overload on the neutrals. The new electrician who is a master
electrician, head of a local electrical union said that this doens't
really
make sense. Does it make sense?


You shouldn't be able to overload your neutral no matter what you do, unless
he used an undersize neutral. However, you really have two electrical
services, each with the same capacity. You can overload one while the other
is relatively unused; in which case you move some heavy loads from the
overloaded side service to the lightly used one. Maybe that is what he
meant, but why the heck didn't he just do it?

I also know that the city likes to have all neutral circuits split up at
the device locations and to avoid tying all neutrals together. The new
electrician said that this is not really necessary but would do it if I
wanted him to. Does this make sense?

Each circuit has to have its own neutral; you can't join them before the
breaker box. The exception is a multiwire circuit, where two circuits share
a neutral. Is that what you are referring to? If so, I have not heard of
multiwire circuits being a code violation, but some people dislike them.
Done properly they are a bit more efficient than other circuits; done wrong
they are a fire hazzard.