Split Bus Panel
Sizing a service with a split bus panel.
Split bus panel. These panels usually have several circuit. These are the service disconnects. At the top was a section fed from the service wires with space for 6 dp breakers. The six are the disconnect.
A split bus panel is an electrical panel with two separate non connected buses. And if you live in a house that was built between the 1950s and the 1970s chances are you may have a split buss electrical panel. Range dryer etc 2 would feed the lighting sections below where all the 120v loads would go. 4 of these would feed 240v loads.
Split bus electrical panels are different from other electrical panels because they don t have a single circuit breaker to shut off all of the power. Even today 20 70a are like 9 and 100 a are 60 these panels are hot wired straight to the meter. The split bus panel design took advantage of a nec national electric code allowance that a main service panel could have up to six switch throws to shut off all power. A split bus panel is an electrical panel which is split into two sections.
The whole point of the rule of six split bus panels was that fat 100 150 200a main breakers were prohibitively expensive and they wanted to do the job with six much cheaper 20 70a breakers. Now the main difference is that a main breaker electrical panel has a main breaker. Here s a marked up photo of a split bus panel with most of the circuit breakers removed. For an electric service with a split bus panel you generally go with the.
A main section and a sub main section if you will. Now before i tell you what a split buss electrical panel is let me tell you what a main breaker electrical panel is. Inspecting split bus panels split bus panel explained. The bus bars are represented by the red and blue lines in the diagrams below.
The top cluster of breakers usually the top two or three in each column for a total of four or six breakers are each marked at the side as a main breaker. So to your left we have a main breaker electrical panel and to your right we have a split buss electrical panel. Wires will run from that one breaker and be connected directly to the bus bars for the other section of breakers. There is not a true main breaker in a split bus electrical panel type.
The history of split bus panels. The buss was split into usually 3 sections.