Awhile back I posted a question regarding two branch circuits sharing a neutral in the same conduit. This question applies to that same circuit but is independent of that issue. I was working in a junction box that contains circuit #13, #14 and a shared neutral. The wires come in from the service box and exit in several directions. All three wire connections were soldered and taped, so I removed the tape, cut the soldered blob and stripped the wires for wire nuts. Since I was going to be working on #13 only, I put a wire nut on all the #14 hots. #13 hot and neutral were still disconnected. I needed to test something so I turned #14 breaker on. I tried a light switch thinking that the light would not work and was surprised that it did. I rechecked the wires and confirmed that only one wire (hot) was connected. I shut the breaker off again and found the reason that the circuit works with only hot: there is a dead short between neutral and the conduit. I would expect to find a short if I was looking back toward the service entrance since they are connected there. But I had separated the neutrals and was checking the "downstream" portion of the circuit. So I decided to check out the service entrance. We have two four-inch boxes that are stacked together. Four branch circuits come into these boxes and then there are two short conduit runs bringing these circuits into the panel. One of the circuits comes into the four-inch box via flexible cable. The hot wire is connected to the hot wire that goes into the panel. The neutral wire is cut and capped with a wire nut. No other wire is connected to this! It appears that the conduit is being used for neutral. In the first case, it may be unintentional since there is a separate neutral wire. But in the second case, it appears as though the flexible cable was purposely used as the neutral. Now, I know this is wrong and I know this is bad, my question is "How bad?" What are the ramifications of using conduit as neutral? Should I stop using these circuits immediately or is it OK to use them until I can correct the problem? Thanks.

Is this doable, and if so, how? Previously in a blackout we would turn off the main breaker to separate from the pole and then backfeed our 5000w generator. We could run most anything in the house, admittedly not at the same time. Wife needed to do wash? make sure to turn off some lights, fridge, etc. wintertime, we need to make sure the boiler has power. In the summer outages that circuit would not be a concern. But I want to do this right. the manual transfer switch at home depot has 6 breakers. that means only 6 circuits can be powered? Is there a way to do what I want? To power all circuits, knowing not everything can be on at the same time?