OT Tandem Circuit Breaker

I'll admit right away I know enough about
electricity to fill a thimble.
So our new heat pump stopped working after
a month. I called the company and they came
out to find that the breaker broke and
nothing was wrong with the heat pump. I was
not at home when all this was going on so I
came home just to find the wires off and
capped because the worker didn't have the
correct breaker. I did not see where the.
Wires went. I got a new tandem breaker just
like the old. I put the red (HOT) wire for
the heat pump at the very top pole and the
ground wire at the very bottom pole. The
center two poles is for the dryer. Again
Hot wire on top and ground below it. Is
this right? Both dryer and heat pump are
working but I question the way I wired it
cause you can see in the picture the
secound tandem breaker down in the picture
goes Red Black Red Black
Picture is loading sideways so the breaker in question is on the left

It is good.

Thank you Sir!!
I figured its ok since there was no
smoke or fire!! LOL

FYI, your black wire is not a ground. :shock:

Good to know. . Is the ground wires the
bare wires?

(quoted from post at 13:27:09 10/25/15) I'll admit right away I know enough about
electricity to fill a thimble.
So our new heat pump stopped working after
a month. I called the company and they came
out to find that the breaker broke and
nothing was wrong with the heat pump. I was
not at home when all this was going on so I
came home just to find the wires off and
capped because the worker didn't have the
correct breaker. I did not see where the.
Wires went. I got a new tandem breaker just
like the old. I put the red (HOT) wire for
the heat pump at the very top pole and the
ground wire at the very bottom pole. The
center two poles is for the dryer. Again
Hot wire on top and ground below it. Is
this right? Both dryer and heat pump are
working but I question the way I wired it
cause you can see in the picture the
secound tandem breaker down in the picture
goes Red Black Red Black
Picture is loading sideways so the breaker in question is on the left

Click to expand...

Ground wire connected to a breaker? You are going to blow something to bits.
Ground is used hold metal components , cabinets and the neutral to near true earth potential. The insulated white neutral conductor is a load current carrying wire.
What is the running current and locked rotor current of the heat pump. Plus the current of the outside condensor/evaporator fan? Is the air mover for the inside air condensor/evaporator on the same same heat pump breaker?

All he did was hook up two wires . He doesn't need to know any of that. The same size breaker that was there was replaced. You also probably know he did not mean ground wire. For that much confusion he did good.

With that 240V, single phase, tandem breaker set up all hot wires are connected to the breakers. Grounding conductors(bare or green) are connected to the ground bus in the panel. The outer two hot wires go to one appliance, the inner two to another. This is important because on an over load the inner two breakers are tied together mechanically, and the outer two are also tied together. So in the event of an overload all hot conductors to a load are interrupted because of the mechanical tie between the breakers. It doesn't make any difference which breaker the red or black conductors are attached to as long as the ones from one load are connected to the inner breakers and the other load are connected to the outer breakers. A bit confusing, but if you think it through it makes sense.

Makes perfect sense! I get it now thanks for the information

does this look better?

(quoted from post at 14:08:11 10/25/15) All he did was hook up two wires . He doesn't need to know any of that. The same size breaker that was there was replaced. You also probably know he did not mean ground wire. For that much confusion he did good.

Click to expand...

I was checking to see if the breaker was the proper size. Not a lot of forward thinking here sometimes . Why would I ask if it wasn't of value ?

Be aware also, most modern breakers provide two kinds of protection. Slow overload protection, protects against slow build-up current overload, this is called thermal protection because the thermal element inside the breaker alowly heats up til it expands and heats up so much it cannot cool itself down, and it trips. The other kind of protection is inrush current protection, the magnetic part of the breaker will also cause it to trip if there is some sudden abrupt inrush of current, that happens so fast it doesn't have time to heat the thermal part up, but must be immediately stopped. Modern breakers are great.
GFCI's measure how much ground currecnt is going down the ground wire, also measure the imbalance between hot and netrual, and will trip out and save your life in the bathroom or outdoors.
THose smart little AFCI's have memorized what a short-circuit arc looks like, and will trip if they detect an arc. Safety item for bedrooms, where we stuff all those wires behind all the dressers and beds, and scoot things around all the time, and fray wires. Prevents smoldering fires.
Looks like all your grounding is correct.
Good old Code. Probably more safety things now, since I retired.