mikestock wrote:
After further inspection, this system was jury rigged for illegal back feeding with a generator. It feeds back through two parallel 200 amp panels. They used, what looks like, 10 gauge 3 conductor stranded wire. The colors are black and green for the hot legs and white for neutral. Apparently they got by with this setup. I have no idea if an Rv was ever hooked up to this system or if back feeding was the only purpose. It back feeds through a 240 volt 30 amp breaker in each box wired in parallel. I disconnected one of the boxes so that I can feed the receptacle through the other. Still have no equipment ground.
I may be better off using the three wires and installing a 30 amp setup with a ground.
I think your analysis is likely correct as to the previous usage of this (obviously not code compliant) boondoggle. Connecting it to both panels, if I'm understanding the setup correctly, is a particularly horrid idea. It means, among other things, that pulling the main breaker in either of the panels does not kill the power to that panel...nice. It also means that you could potentially have a steady 60A load on the 10 gauge wire without tripping any breakers.
I agree that putting in a 30A receptacle is by far the sanest way of fixing this (well, short of ripping the wire out and installing a correct 50A circuit).
