When Replacing A Breaker Panel, Would You Do this?

The house my Dad bought in 1957 had 2 fuses. One for the lights. One for the receptacles. 6 room 2 story house with basement. I think there were 7 lights and 4 or 5 receptacles in the whole houe

Reply to
clare
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I don't think I said otherwise. What I said was in relation to finding an breaker too large for the circuit. It could easily allow enough current to pass to cause a fire. That's what I found. Someone had put 20A breakers that seemed pretty clear too large for the size wire they were connected to. In that case, a 19.5A load wouldn't trip the breaker but would warm up the in-wall wires pretty well, perhaps melting the insulation and causing an arc. IIRC, that's why arc-fault breakers came into being. (-:

IMHO, to be completely sure, you need to inspect the panel to make sure that all the wires pulled are of the same era if you want to use sizing as your only guide. Even then, every obvious new addition to the panel is suspect, especially if there aren't any matching inspection stickers. There's also no way to tell whether some home electrician added four 150 watt floods to a front door sconce circuit and has severely overloaded the circuit way downstream of the wire at the panel. The older the house, the more likely circuits have been tapped. That's why I mentioned investigating to see which breakers were original to the panel. Tapped and overloaded outside circuits might be fine in the cold weather and heat to the point of failure at the peak of summer.

Ralph, let me ask you what would you think if you found an older panel (50 years old) with cloth covered wire that all looked to be about the same age and gauge. They're hooked up to a mix of half 20A and 15A breakers with the

20A breakers being obviously much newer than any of the 15A breakers. The 20A breakers were all made 10 years after the panel. The 15A breakers have the same manufacture date (almost) as the panel itself. (I'm excluded some of the newer circuits that were obvious late-comers like central A and grounded outlets near windows for window A/C's for the sake of simplicity.)

Wow. Ironically, we may see a time when devices become so efficient that you can live on 40A all over again.

It's interesting how the patterns of electrical usage have changed. Nowadays, since everything has a charger or line cord you can almost never have enough outlets. I don't think I know a single person who doesn't use multiple outlet strips throughout the house. In the modern kitchen, even three 20 amp circuits might not be enough for some households.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

In my house, a 12 gauge might feed a 14 gauge circuit. So, whether that is legal, don't know. I do know it exists. That circuit might have been on a

15 amp breaker, and it should have been noted.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

As stated above, the job is to replace the panel, not check out everything in the house. I would look at the size of the wires and put in the correct breakers for the wires leaving the panel. Then report to the home owner what I found. Really report first, then let the home owner make the decision on how much he wanted to spend.

Much the same when you take a car in for tires. If a mechanic finds other issues such as bad breaks or out of alignment, he will change the tires, and report the other issues to the car owner.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

I also installed 85 foot of 10 gauge wire to my garage. Does not mean to use over 20 amp breaker.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

When a panel is well marked and distances of a run are known, you can size a breaker based on the designed and intended capacity of the circuit based on the over-sized conductor being used to combat voltage drop...

But on a panel where every circuit except for the 240 volt appliances was double tapped ?

Right, it would cost more than the panel replacement to trace down all of those circuits and examine every junction on each line to assess that situation -- all that has been described was the service upgrade from 100amps to 200amps and the breaker panel replacement...

This is why people who see a shiny new electrical panel in a house shouldn't be taken in an ASSUME the house has been "rewired" when the only work which was done was that the electrical service and panel were replaced...

~~ Evan

Reply to
Evan

What I've seen happen far too often is someone tapping into a circuit instead of pulling a new wire from the circuit breaker box. While a light circuit is probably no big deal, adding outlets can easily overload a circuit in a way that causes wires to overheat in the wall. That's one of the reason I mark outlets and fixed lighting loads on the inside door of my circuit panel. It's a Word document I print out on card stock and revise as necessary.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

NFPA somewhat saves you on 15 and 20a circuits with 240.4(D). A 14 gauge wire actually has an ampacity of 20a at 60c rating in 310.16 but they make you put it on a 15a breaker to build in a

Reply to
gfretwell

Sounds like an idiot to me. It's not that hard to label wires. The guy must have been short on work, so opted to do it where it would consume the most amount of time......

Of course, this is TV. Take it with a grain of salt. Most of these shows seem to find the most costly methods available to do these repairs and use every hi-tech gadget available (to advertise the crap). You have to be very wealthy to do it like they do it on those shows. In fact I've always wondered why they even start with an old building, when they end up destroying or removing most of it. Seems cheaper to begin new..... People buy older homes that need work mostly because they cant afford to build new, and because the older homes are also built sturdier.

I rarely watch those programs anymore. They're just not practical.

Reply to
jw

Well, from my understanding of wiring, wire size is one factor that determines the breaker size. 14 gage, 15 amps. 12 gage, 20 amps, 10 gage,

30 amps.

For aluminum wire, down rate the breaker by one size.

What should they have done instead?

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

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He noted that he would normally mark all the wires before removing them but since the existing labeling was wrong, he chose to simply cut all of the wires and "figure it out afterwards".

As he was connecting the wires to the new breakers he used this simple method to determine which wires to connect to which breakers:

"There are 3 sizes of wires. The smaller wires go to the 15A breakers, the mid-size wires go to the 20A breakers and the largest wires go to the 30A breaker."

Doesn't this seem to be an oversimplified, possibly dangerous, method?

Since it was obvious that whoever came before him violated codes by doubling up breakers and who knows what else, isn't it dangerous to assume that the correct wire sizes were used as the mess grew over the years?

Maybe they were just saving air time by using that explanation, but it seems to me that a lot more investigation should have been done as opposed to simply letting the wire size determine the breaker size. To even imply that the wire size is the determining factor seems irresponsible on their part.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

It can't if the breaker is sized correcly to the wire size as it's supposed to be. Put a 15 amp breaker on a circuit with 14 gauge wire and you can put as many outlets as you please on it without the wire overheating.

=A0That's one of

Reply to
trader4

I didn't see the episode. Electricians have not been my favorite mechanics on TOH in general (but better than Trethewey doing electrical work).

It is not a problem if a circuit with #14 wire, but #12 at the panel, is connected to a 15A circuit breaker. Occasionally #12 or #10 may be used for voltage drop with smaller wire downstream. In a rewire a #14 ckt might have #12 connecton to the panel. Would seem like a minimal check would be to feel if the wire size matched the breaker, and if the breaker was smaller than the wire use the smaller breaker in the new panel.

There are also anomalies, like you can legitimately have perhaps a 40A breaker on a #10 wire for an air conditioning compressor.

If enforced, the NEC requires meaningful labeling of circuits (408.4-A). ("Lights and receptacles" is not meaningful.) The original panel may have had some of this information (or maybe not).

Reply to
bud--

In an old house, there's no telling if the circuit's been under semi-permanent overload and has tripped and reset so many times that the breaker itself has or is about to fail. I sure there are at least some tenants or homeowners who, when discovering that a breaker no longer trips the way it used to, assume the problem is fixed and not that the breaker has failed. For me the bottom line is that it's not likely labeling the wire and which breaker it went to is going to rob the job of all its profit.

I've seen electricians do other questionable things on This Old House, etc. I watched one electrician take long wires in the attic and instead of stripping them out where the light was good and she could sit in a comfortable position she chose to lie prone in a dark corner and strip the wires after they had been fed into the box, mounted far into the edge of the attic. I like to strip the wire in the best light possible so I can see any potential problems. Wires nicked during stripping can lead to arc faults and I would say that wires nicked while being stripped is one of the more common issues I've seen, especially from DIY electricians who don't do it every day.

She also couldn't drive a straight staple - it went crooked and looked like the next hammer blow would drive the narrow edge of the staple into the insulation. I also saw her put more than one cable under the stable, which I've read makes some AHJ inspectors unhappy but is probably compliant with the NEC if the right staples are used.

I use separate staples just because it's a few seconds extra time and a few cents of extra cost to make a cleaner looking install that means less chance of damaging the insulation if for any reason you have to replace one of the wires. She did, however, make sure the cables were laying flat on each other. I think the inspectors worry that the staples used to tack down multiple wires might not be long enough to securely anchor them.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

I tend to agree. At least take a few digital pictures. It's not an activity that's going to take more than 5 minutes.

Oh, I still learn things from them. I saw them pull cable through a conduit using a mouse on twine that pulled a stronger rope and then finally the cable itself (looked like 10 or 8 gauge feeder) using a winch with two foot pedals. If either the puller or the pusher guy took his foot off their footswitch, the winch stopped. I never thought of using a winch for that, and if I ever have to pull cable like that, I might invest in two foot pedals and a heavy duty relay to make the same sort of treadle switch safety.

But sadly, I agree, much of the stuff they do is fast-forwarded. Especially the "What it it?" segments.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

(-:

It seemed to me that he was "throwing away" potentially valuable information by not matching the wire to its original breaker.

I've got a very detailed description of the loads (and even outlets) that each circuit powers on my circuit panel door. I update it every time I make a change to the panel. I created it by checking each circuit out individually to see what did and didn't work after I flipped the breakers. I figure it's the least I can do for the next guy to own the house.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

A am not sure the AFCI is detecting series faults reliably yet. They had a hard enough finding intermittent shorting faults. I think we are on AFCI version 4.0 now and there are still plenty of the 1.0 versions out there. It was a product that was rushed into the code and sold to the customer at the point of a government gun, long before they were perfected. The latest AFCI might find a loose connection at a device termination but I wouldn't count on it. The reason I have heard about limiting the stabbers to 14ga wire has more to do with the forces involved in stuffing the device back in the box. You end up bending the wire and deforming the contact. I have never been a fan but as long as they are still listed, I have to hold my nose and approve them.

I am certainly not advising that you should violate 240.4(D) the 14g =

15a rule.

Bad workmanship can defeat the safety given by any code rule. ;-)

Reply to
gfretwell

In fact there are situations when it could be a 40a breaker on 14 ga wire but don't do it without the proper code guidance (a common question on the inspector's test).

Reply to
gfretwell

Most panel directories are so superficial that they are not that useful. When I replaced my panel, I didn't bother to label anything. I wanted a decent panel directory when I was done and I took the time (half a day) to map every circuit by hooking them up one at a time.

As for the 15 vs 20a choice. 99% of the time, if this is not serving the kitchen or the bath and laundry before the 90s you should default to a 15a breaker unless you really know what is down stream. Most builders used 14ga for virtually all of the branch circuits in a home. If it is much older than the late 60s, the kitchen might even be 14ga.

Reply to
gfretwell

Don't use no double negatives, nohow. I am not going to fail to tell you again, definitely not.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

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In fact there are situations when it could be a 40a breaker on 14 ga wire but don't do it without the proper code guidance (a common question on the inspector's test).

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

I agree, which is why I would make a notation of anything unusual while disconnecting the loads.

Reply to
RBM

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