Electrical question

[robhannon]

I have a strange situation on my porch that I am not %100 if how I am wiring it is acceptable. I have 3 electrical boxes in the ceiling. The left and right ones are lights on on 1 circuit. The center is a fan on another circuit. What I want to do is keep my switches the way they are (one turns on fans, the other lights) but change it so there is a light in the center and a fan with light on the left and right. So i have made junctions in the boxes to bring the fan circuit to both sides and bring the light circuit over to the middle. My problem is now I have 2 switched hots like I want, but I also have 2 separate neutrals on different circuits. The fan does not give the option of separating the light neutral and the fan neutral. Should I splice the neutrals of the 2 circuits or only use one and abandon it? Also should I make sure both circuits are on separate poles in the panel? Re-wiring this so it is all on one circuit the way I would like will be very problematic the way everything is run currently.

[TDHofstetter]

I'd tie all the neutrals together. It's not strictly necessary (one of the neutrals should be fine for everything) but it makes for a neater & less (later) potentially confusing situation.

You can run all these off either one breaker or separate breakers... and if separate it won't matter much if they're opposite poles or not. The lights & fan don't represent very much load to balance, and together they're not likely to be enough to overload a lighting circuit (a ceiling fan drinks very little power).

-- Tim --

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[robhannon]

Both circuits are 20a breakers with 12g wire feeding them so overloading them with the lights is pretty unlikely. The previous homeowner did not believe in separate lighting circuits. Actually he didn't believe in labeling breakers or any sort of wire color scheme. I hate adding confusion to an already jacked up wiring system, but short of yanking and re-running it I don't have much choice. Thanks for the quick reply.

[sibi1972]

Do as Tim says.

The reason it works is ALL neutrals go to the same place in the panel. They are "as same" in the panel.

Hot legs coming off of a breaker may be on different phases. So leave those the way they are. Tie all of the neutrals together if you wish.

"Red"