Sparks! Seeking Urgent Electrical Help

[MikeRoOrganix]

All the pictures should still be there. Here is a link to the album.
http://www.icmag.com/ic/album.php?albumid=29700

Here is another new close up pic for you. Here you can see the copper main ground. There are many white ground wires that originate here and one goes up each flex conduit.

We spent a couple hours last night messing with the wiring. There are a total of EIGHT wires running through the conduit. We decided to put everything back the way we found it and run a new circuit ASAP.

 

[MikeRoOrganix]

We can get power to both outlets, but are unable to get them to ground correctly. We thought we had a ground wire but are unable to correctly hook up the ground to both outlets. In these pictures the green ground wire we cut for the outlets is DISCONNECTED.

 

[rives]

White wires are neutrals, not grounds. If they are hooked up at the device end as a ground, it is a code violation. Ground wires should either be bare or green, and if they are pulled into flex they should be green insulated wire. I doubt that what you see leaving the panel are white wires being used as ground - there are far too many of them for them to be 240v circuits, they look like overworked neutrals (single neutrals split between multiple 120v circuits) to me. I don't know what the hell that yellow wire is that is landed on the ground/neutral bus, but it should be phase-taped to the appropriate color (either green or white). Neutrals and grounds land on the same bus at the main panel (not in a sub), but they perform very different functions and should be treated as separate entities.

It appears that both of the receptacles that you have dangling are GFCI's. If that is the case, they are not hooked up properly - you are running the bottom receptacle off of the load side of the upper one with potentially unpredictable results. You can save the second receptacle for usage somewhere else and just use a conventional receptacle as the second one (it will be protected by the first one if hooked to the first one's load side), or you can take your feed wires and wire nut a couple of jumpers to them and parallel the feed out to the receptacles.

 

[Stress_test]

I was traveling today, so I've been off line. Did you take the pictures down in post 31? I can see all of the others, but not them.

On your ground issue - I don't know if you saw my earlier post, but it doesn't appear that you have grounds being carried with any of the circuits that are leaving the panel in flex. It is required that you carry the ground conductor with the circuit when wiring with flex.

Absolutely correct.
I seen that also in the panel. No ground wire goes into the conduit where the wires from breaker #10 or #5 exists the panel.

It also appears that 2 circuits are using the same neutral in all but 1 or 2 of the conduits.

 

[rives]

Well, did you get this squared away or did you get electrocuted in the process? It's been pretty quiet for several days........