Can Common and Ground Wires be Connected Together in a Breaker Box?
I am using a spare bedroom for a workshop, and have installed extra lighting, a central vacuum and various power tools. The existing outlets are on two circuits, each with a 15 amp breaker. Both circuits are shared with other rooms and I occasionally overload the circuit and have to reset one or the other of the breakers.
I want to add two new dedicated circuits from the main breaker, each to a double gang outlet box containing two receptacles, giving me two four plug outlets. To each two gang box I ran three 10ga wires in flex pipe, (what we used to call greenfield), a red for power, white for neutral, and green for ground.
They each go to the only breaker box, which has a 2” pipe connected to the meter six inches away. There are places to add eight new circuit breakers, but it looks like the ground terminal (where all the bare copper wires are connected) is directly behind the neutral, (where the white return wires are) and most of the terminals on both of them already have wires connected. I can’t turn off the main power to the box, it’s wired directly to the meter with what looks like two # 6 stranded cables to the two main copper strips that supply power to the breakers, and a white to the common. I don’t see a dedicated bare copper cable to the ground connector.
So, I have two #10 white common wires and two # 10 green ground wires all going to basically the same place, and the two red wires that will each connect to a new 30 amp breaker. The hot wires to the breakers will be easy, but there is not room for the two grounds on the strip with all the other bare copper wires, nor the two white neutrals on the strip with all the other white wires. The terminal with the ground wires is almost impossible to get to or even see with all the other wires in front of it.
My questions are:
- Can I pull a wire off the common and pigtail it to the two neutrals, and add a new wire to connect back to the lug, and do the same thing with the ground wires?
- Can I hook up two wires together under one lug? It does not look like there is room.
- Do I have to hook the ground on the same terminal as the other bare copper wires, or just put any of these four wires anywhere I can get them, on either of the strips that have all the other common and ground wires? They all show to be connected when I test for continuity with an OHM meter.
- Can I add new connector strips in the box? That would probably be a major undertaking, and there seems to be neither room in the box nor the strength of will in myself for that.
Thanks in advance for any input. I searched the forum before posting, but everything I read about the neutral and ground wires seemed to be contradicted by the next, and I’m looking for a simple answer to a simple problem. I may have over done it a little using 10 ga. Solid and 30 amp breakers, but I’m really tired of going out at all hours to reset the breakers.