Do I have a problem?

I live in an old house. Built in 1925. The wire in question is an older wire but not that old. The Circuit breaker box is new 200 amp. The wire has a metal jacket and three covered wires in it (black, white and red) the metal jacket is the ground.

It looks like something used for 240, or 3 way switch. But at the circuit box the black is hot on one circuit breaker and the red is hot on a different circuit breaker and the white is neutral. It runs to the first receptacle for the washer, and the first hot (black wire) terminates there. The neutral ties in there and then runs on with the other hot (the red wire). Not sure where the circuit continues to. This sure seems odd to me, one wire on two different breakers.

240 breakers are all one in my circuit box with two tie ins for both hots. My situation is two different circuits sharing one neutral. Had a scary moment, I was trying to splice in to pick up power for another receptacle and I thought I had the power off because the washer receptacle was dead. When I was pounding with a chisel through the metal jacket it shorted out and I got a neat spark show. No shock though! What do you think?

I currently moved the red wire in my circuit box to the neutral/grounding strip and rewired the entire circuit to run off from one breaker. Is there any problem with code having red run as my ground? Should I go back to the way it was? Is it OK to cut the red wire short in the circuit box and make it a dead wire using the casing as the ground?

Thanks for any input!

Its called a multiwire branch circuit. It was fine till you messed it up...

I would put it back the way it was with one exception. And that would be to use a "tie-bar" or double breaker. One side of breaker going to black and the other to red. Then put a note in your breaker panel that this is not a 240V circuit, but is two 120V circuits which both go to that one box and it is tie-bared for safety for those who may be servicing the box as you did. (Must turn off both circuits at same time.)

Not a good idea to use red or black as ground. Use green for ground, white for neutral, and black or red for hot. This is for the safety of those who may work on your electrical system in the future. They would expect the correct wire colors to be used as intended.

As for using red for one 120V circuit, black for a second 120V circuit, and a shared white (neutral) wire, this is ok. You might have been thinking that you would need two white wires. Actually if one hot is wired from one leg of a 240V service and the other is wired from the other leg, then when using the same amount of electricity from both circuits, they "balance" the load on the white wire! And if only one circuit is in use, then the white wire would be big enough to handle the load.

More on the neutral wire...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_wire

As to placing both the red and the black on the same breaker. If you have your washing machine running and then go and use whatever is connected to the red wire circuit, this may be too much of a load for the breaker and the breaker might trip.

So before (I don't know your wire sizes or breaker sizes) let's say you had two 15 amp breakers. This gave you 15 amps on one circuit and 15 amps on the second circuit. Now you have just 15 amps for both circuits.

I would suggest that you get a couple of books on electrical wiring and read about these things. It can be fun to learn about this stuff. If you feel you are in over your head with what you have done, might want to call an electrician and have him check things over to be on the safe side.

Thanks for the info

Wow that was everything I was looking for. I think I will put it back just the way it was with a tie bar on the two breakers.

If I rememeber correctly if the breakers are not half size breakers and are one on top of the other they are on different phases and balanced. If this is the case the red and black were balanced.

Sounds like I was fine. I will just splice in to one of circuts for the outlet I needed to install.

Again thanks for the good info, this site has gotten me so much great info.

Its called a multiwire branch circuit. It was fine till you messed it up...

Click to expand...

The neutral connection that goes back to the panel is CRITICAL. If you lose this ( from a loose wire nut for example) , you can end up with 240 volts on your 120 volt outlets. Not good for appliances.