Open or loose neutrals are the bread and butter of our trade; many are the problems that can be traced to the "less important" neutral wire!

Indeed, I think I became a "real electrician" the day the neutral went from "less" to "most" important wire in my mind.

There was once a splice going bad at the PoCo transformer. This resulted in voltage surges at the house, with much damage to the expensive stuff. Simply put, if two loads are in series, the one with less resistance sees more voltage, and dies.

A shop was experiencing failures of their "surge suppressor" power strips. It was also interesting that some lights got brighter whenever the table saw operated. That problem was traced to an broken nuetral lug at the service.

Seven wires under a wire nut is almost never a good idea. When used to combine three circuits, and run but one wire to the panel, it's a really bad idea. One wire with a poor connection led to $300 of repairs to assorted power supplies. (BTW, in this specific instance, this was NOT a proper 'multi-wire branch circuit. Someone had thought to combine three 20 amp neutrals (single phase) into a single #10 to the panel. The three circuits were so cross-connected that it was not possible to fix this without completely re-wiring the office [Linked Image] )

One can almost see a time-line in an electricians' training by watching the attitude toward 'shared neutrals' change over time:
- When first introduced to it, apprentices are mystified;
- The mystery is replaced by enthusiasm as they realize that they don't need to pull as many wires;
- If the guy fails to complete training, he later adds to this 'short cut' by, say, combining neutrals that ought not be joined, putting neutral busses somewhere besides the panel, etc.;
- He begins to see problems that are traced to bad neutral connections, and starts fretting about 'unqualified handymen;' and, finally,
- He gets to buy $300 of smoked power supplies because of an "oops" moment, and he begins to re-think sharing neutrals. Especially when he knows some untrained folks will follow after him, and mess with his fine efforts [Linked Image]