*upgrading a home electrical panel

First, you should share your experience doing electrical work with us, then we can better help you. If you have limited or no experience, your electrical service is probably about the most dangerous place to get any

I agree with Roy. Let's hear about your plan to change this out. Pictures would be helpful. Do you have any experience working with live wires?

I did this about a year ago. Here's my detailed report.

Be sure to read the whole thread as various experts posted some suggestions and comments. Take those that say: "YOU'RE GONNA DIE!" with a grain of salt; obviously I didn't.

A couple (i.e., "connect the grounds before the neutrals") were well received.

For service panel get a contractor because you will have to at this time upgrade the service amperage, meter, and any changes in code since the home was built. Particularly where the neutral to ground bonding occurs in your area and how it is grounded, may need a copper rod at the house, etc. If a local code inspector comes around you will have to do it over anyway, and you'll need a service shut off as others mentioned. Asking for a service shutoff usually triggers the permit process in municipalities.

Certainly you need a permit virtually anywhere but a lot of places will let you do this "owner/builder". The Power Company will pull the meter or tell you it is OK for you to do it, then you upgrade your side of the meter. The PoCo determines if their drop and your service entrance is OK (you will need to provide them the wire to upgrade from the meter to the service point where the drop connects to the SE) because you own that but they need to do it. They are the ones with the tool to crimp the drop to the SE and they are the only ones qualified to work hot service drops. A call to the PoCo will straighten all that out and get the real answer based on what they want you to do. They will not reconnect until you are inspected and approved by the local building dept.

Some may say you can do this "hot" but they are idiots. Remember service conductors have NO overcurrent protection. You will not blow the primary fuse on the transformer if you short the secondary. At least not in any meaningful length of time.

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Friday, August 10, 2007

I'm sorry it took me a while to show a photo, I couldn't get

it to load.

This is the existing panel that is going to be replaced, as you

can see, it is an old 120 Amp panel, the box doesn't close all

the way so it is not rain tight, in other words, it is a hazard.

I will replace it with possibly a GE outside box, 120 amp and same

number of breakers. I am just going to replace a 15 amp GFI breaker

for the bathrooms instead of the one that is now, which is not GFI.

Thank you for your help.

Lo

You *still* haven't gotten it to load, and you're not going to, either. This is a text-only newsgroup, and even in the very unlikely event that you succeed in attaching a photo to a post here, the vast majority of news servers will strip the attachment before propagating the post.

Thank you Doug for your info, I was wondering why I couldn't load

the photo. If anyone would like to see the photo of the old panel,

I can e-mail it.

snipped-for-privacy@pipeline.com

please remove nospam.

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There are loads of free photo-hosting sites available on the web.