Quote:
Originally Posted by schwarz633
If you're combining circuits and/or even moving circuit breakers you have to be aware of the possibility of two circuits "sharing" a neutral. These are called a multi-wire branch circuits. The dead give away will be a 3 wire romex connected to two circuit breakers. But if you've got conduit things can get a bit elusive.
Each of these circuits needs to be on opposite legs of the panel. Breakers across from each other will be on the same leg, but on alternating legs from top to bottom. If you don't do this, there is the potential of overloading the neutral by 2X. I believe in recent times the two breakers needed to have a handle tie between them, but it wasn't always like this.
Also, if you disconnect the neutral on a multi-wire branch circuit you will send 240V across both 120V circuits in series. Depending on the balance of loads on these circuits, each of them may see anywhere from 0-240V and something will get toasted. Ask me how I know.
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If he doesn't know this then stopping the idea of a DYI is paramount.