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I am doing my basement partitions from scratch and i am doing also the electrical wiring. I have check in the electrical panel board and they have put 2 pole breaker in the plug in the basement. Can i use it other for my lights in the basement?

MARIO GARCES
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  • More details, please. Not all two-pole breakers are the same. A photo would be great. – isherwood May 15 '19 at 20:04
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    Possible duplicate of [New Basement electrical wiring](https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/165189/new-basement-electrical-wiring) – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact May 15 '19 at 20:52
  • It sounds like they planned to use a multi wire branch circuit. A mwbc is 2 120v circuits that share the same neutral. It can be done but I would ask several questions because with current code AFCI and or GFCI protection of the circuits may be required. Is the basement going to be a living space or maybe a work area? Fully finished? Bedroom? Bath or laundry area? Depending on your answers to these questions the type of protection will vary but just about every outlet will require one or the other type of protection with the 2017 NEC. – Ed Beal May 16 '19 at 14:20

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Depends what you mean by "2-pole". There's real 2-pole breakers, and then there's double-stuffs (twin, duplex, tandem). Not the same at all.

It's always OK to run 2 simple circuits -- i.e. each circuit has its own cable and the cable contains its own dedicated neutral.

However, if the 2 circuits are in 1 cable and share the neutral, it must be a 2-pole - a double-stuff will overload the neutral and potentially shock installers.

If the breaker is a true 2-pole, then they will common trip, meaning if one overloads it will trip the other. There's nothing wrong with that, but it might be a nuisance.

If the 2 circuits do share the neutral, that is called a multi-wire branch circuit. Common trip isn't required, but common maintenance shutoff is... and a 2-pole breaker does provide that. In fact, that's what we recommend for this type of circuit, because a 2-pole breaker is the easiest way to do it! Further, this is the only way to do GFCI on this type of circuit.

Harper - Reinstate Monica
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