Hopefully tonight I'll get the last freaking piece of conduit in, and I'll be able to run the wiring. I understand that in the main box the neutral and ground are basically the same, but in the sub-panel the ground(bare or green) and neutral(white) need to be separated. This is to keep from having current flowing through pipes, etc. in case of wiring failure of the neutral, I believe. I understand how you don't want that to happen, makes sense.
What I'm not understanding is how they refer to the bars in the sub-panel being separated. Wouldn't that mean that on one side of the panel the breakers would have the white connected to the white and the other side of the panel would have the breakers connected to the ground?
Ah wait, I think I kinda just had a flash of some understanding. In a main panel, you tend to wire the white(neutral) next to the breaker it corresponds to. In a sub-panel, do you run the neutrals all over to the neutral bar? If so, does this mean that unless you run a green/bare wire on a circuit the ground bar will not have connectors other than back to the main box? That must mean that the ground bar, which was previously a neutral bar, was NOT in contact with the box itself, and probably would want to be now that it's a ground bar.
Just looked further, and the ground in the main box connects to the white/neutral bar, so the statement in the last sentence is wrong.
Can anyone help me follow this? I'm gonna have an electrical guy inspect what I do, I just want to understand the reasoning behind it 100 percent if I can.
Thanks!
--bob
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