weird wiring and wierd voltages on 3 dual switches...

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Originally Posted by hj

IF they are adjacent, the #8 and #10 should be on different legs which would create a 240v circuit and blow one or the other, and possibly the main breaker, if they were connected together. The same with #12 and #14. This is a valid assumption since your pool pump is 240v and it uses adjacent breakers. Something is erroneous in your diagnosis. You could safely connect #8 and #12. And #10 and #14.

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Thank you hj. I embarassingly have typos in my very pretty diagram. It's actually 8 and 12 connected and 10 and 14 connected. Do you have any ideas on an application that might have required this? Security systems or cameras perhaps? I would just really like to know why they did this before I bring an electrician out here to make it safe.

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Originally Posted by jimbo

I see a safety issue as you have it: the load on ONE switch could short, drawing well in excess of 20 amps and the NEITHER breaker might trip until he total current thru the switch and load wiring neared 40 amps

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Jimbo, thanks. That was my first thought when I saw this. I'm going to get it cleaned up by an electrician, but I'm going to do some crawling around in very tight spaces first to try to find why the heck they did this in the first place.

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Originally Posted by ActionDave

meweber1000, from the photo you posted I can tell you that the switches can feed two different loads from two different breakers.

I can't tell if they are wired properly.

I can tell you that a device like the switch you have, when fed from two different breakers should be on a breakers that have a common trip.

The panel you have is obsolete and has a bad reputation. If you do a web search on FPE panels you will find no shortage of negative comments.

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Thanks. We are aware of this. We probably should have bulldozed the house...it has a zillion things out of code.

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Originally Posted by meweber1000

to find why the heck they did this in the first place.

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Save yourself some time and trouble because that question is simple to answer. They had no idea what they were doing. The sad part about this thread is that when someone else comes along that don’t know what is going on does not help matters one bit.

The safe solution is very simple and that is to call someone with a lot of experience to investigate what is going on.