Shoutout to the apprentice who spotted my backwards neutral in a 200-amp panel

We were finishing a service upgrade in a 1920s bungalow last Thursday, and I was about to button up the main panel. The kid pointed at the neutral bar and said, 'That lug looks different.' Sure enough, I'd landed the main neutral on the wrong side of the isolation block. Anyone else have a fresh set of eyes save you from a simple but costly mistake?

2 comments

2 Comments

riverm481mo agoMost Upvoted

Honestly though, how big of a deal is a backwards neutral in the grand scheme? It would have still made a circuit, right? I get what @dakota_taylor39 is saying about fresh eyes, but sometimes it feels like we make a huge fuss over tiny things that a homeowner would never even notice.

dakota_taylor391mo ago

Spot that stuff all the time in my own work. I'll stare at a design mockup for hours, completely missing a typo in a headline or a color that's slightly off. Then my partner will walk by, glance at the screen for two seconds, and point it right out. It's wild how your brain just fills in what it expects to see after a while. You NEED that second person who isn't deep in the weeds with you.