On Wed, 04 May 2005 17:12:53 -0500, Richard J Kinch
wrote:

Chris Lewis writes:

If you connect them together, what happens? Zip.

If you connect them together, they are DEAD SHORTED. Whether anything
"happens" doesn't change that fact.

Dude, you're babbling. Putting the breaker in the wrong position
will not and can-not cause a dead short. If you *HAVE* a dead short,
then putting the breaker in the wrong position, in systems where
that's possible, causes nothing to happen, where loud and exiting
things would happen were the breaker in the RIGHT place.

In OPs case, there's a breaker at the service panel, and a disconnect
in some other box downstream. When the disconnector is open,
nothing happens. When the disconnector is closed the first breaker
pops.

Now at this point, a description of this second disconnector would
be useful, But if it's built like a DPST switch, then the most likely
explanation is that it's wired sideways, with the high and low feeds
from the service panel connected to the input and output of the
same arm in the breaker. The other possibility is that the output
side of at least one arm on the breaker is connected to the nuetral
or safety ground, or shorted out somewhere. You can figure out which
by disconnecting everything except one of the hots, and putting a
voltmeter from the terminal that the OTHER hot was connected to
to ground, with the disconnect closed. If you get voltage,
you know that that's the OUTPUT of the currently hot leg.