Installing a New Circuit Breaker

I'll be insering a number of QO breakers in my load center. It seems that I will run out of room to connect the white and copper wires. It appears that multiple wires have already been connected to the buss in a single location, but there are some open ones still available.

Some questions:

Can I connect more than one wire to an open space on the bar? Can I connect a second wire to an already used space? Can you mix a white and a copper? etc...

Any rules of thumb would be helpful...

 

I suggest you install a seperate Grounding terminal bar for terminating the bare Equiptment Grounding conductors. The seperate Grounding bar must be thouroughly bonded to both the metal of the enclosure and the Service Neutral terminal bar.---Good Luck!!!!

 

You can add a grounding bus bar to your panel to get more connection points for your neutral and grounding wires but make sure it is the appropiate one for your panel. I would also suggest that you seperate the grounding wires to the new bar and leave the neutrals (white wires) on the orginal bar.

and no... only one wire should be on each connection point. Also if someone has done it, make sure there is only one wire on each breaker. I have seen instances where the previous home owner has run new circuits and tied in the new wires to breakers already being used for other circuits trying to keep from replacing the panel.

 

Sq.D Type QO panels allow 2 #14,#12,or#10 bare or green ground wires per terminal on the neutral bar,but only 1 neutral wire(white).