Getting some electrical work done on our 40 yr old house, and the electrician is urging us to replace the old Federal Pacific breaker box. He’s not refusing to work on it, but says they are dangerous because the breakers frequently fail to trip (and overheat).
Any electricians or electrical experts care to weigh in on this? I’m not an expert, but I think he’s sincere and not trying to upsell. If there’s a real danger I’m not opposed to spending the money, but this is at least a couple grand to fix something that isn’t causing me any trouble.
My $.02 is that 40 year old breakers probably need to be replaced. I work with generators and solar equipment and we pretty routinely replace breakers that are half that age as they no longer function the way they are supposed to. They won’t cause you any trouble until they do, and Murphy is always in play.
I recently replaced a Federal Pacific panel. It cost a couple of grand but I think it was worth it. My research indicated that FP panels are total crap and have a significant failure rate (the company falsified their test results to get a UL rating). Since a failure risks burning down the house, I consider the money well spent.
Bold added. If you search for “Federal Pacific panels” you’ll see many sites with similar information.
I take it that the question has been clearly answered.
Over here (Aus), I have a ‘panel’ which is in a ‘box’, and the panel contains ‘breakers’ which are just mounted on the panel in the box. If I was worried about the breakers, I’d replace the breakers.
What exactly is a breaker box? And what does ‘replacing it’ mean?
You have it correct except you cannot just put in new breakers as there are several incompatible standards used over the years by various manufacturers. The “Stab-LoK” refers to the Federal Pacific mounting standard and that very system has problems. The contacts can loosen and then heat up from the extra resistance. Plus an old main panel will often not have separate ground and neutral bus bars as now required.
Thanks for the responses everyone. I’ve been wandering the internet looking for articles and I agree, these are probably dangerous in the case of an appliance going rogue (and failing to break the circuit). We’re going to replace it entirely.
Electrician is scheduled to drop by today and give an estimate.
We just forced our in-laws side of the family to replace their panel. A couple of breakers were tripping regularly. I pulled one of and found the blade contact had been almost completely eaten away by arcing. Two others were also well on their way with pitting and arcing residue.
Ah. Over here (vic.aus) it’s all DIN rail, and older than that all panels were custom made with holes drilled in a backboard. AFAIK There was never an intermediate stage of incompatible standards here.
DIN rails are commonly seen in industrial settings but not for home use in the U.S.
Here you buy a breaker box which has bus bars for the ground and neutral, the two hots are wired to the back plane, and the back plane that has sockets for plugging in breakers. The current goes to the breaker through the backplane, and then off to wherever through a single screw on the breaker. They all work more or less the same, but all the manufacturers have their own standards. GE, Siemens, and two types of Square D are the most common ones. You can’t use say GE breakers in a Federal Pacific box.
So to do it right you need to rip the entire metal box out. Which will involve temporarily cutting the service, and may trigger code upgrade requirements for arc fault interrupters at $50 a pop, a bigger service and such. And more fun if the building uses conduit and the box is in a finished wall.
The system does have it’s merits, it’s impossible to wire a 240 volt or 120 split phase circuit incorrectly since the backplane alternates phases going down and a 240 volt breaker uses a double space.
After a few more visits by electricians for estimates, I’m sure I’m doing the right thing. They weren’t actually hissing like vampires confronted with a cross, but close. One of them yesterday morning said “Oh, you’ve got one of the widowmakers installed here.”
I’m also soliciting bids to install a generator transfer switch (this was what started the whole mess). One didn’t understand at first I was planning to replace the circuit box and declined to bid on the transfer switch because of it.
When I first got to China, I thought it was really neat that my house was using DIN rail, which is standard at work. Until the GFCI breaker failed in a way that 380 VAC was applied to half the circuits on my ground floor and fried everything without a physical on/off switch.
We’ve always had a fully-earthed system, so it’s difficult to imagine any kind of single fault that could put two phases across our home wiring. If another phase fell onto the neutral anywhere in the system, it would short out to Earth.
We get lightning strikes sometimes (globally, not a high-lighting region), but I can’t remember ever hearing about a phase fault like you describe.
In case anyone’s interested. We just finished replacing all the Stab Lok circuits. New box, new breakers, new service wiring from meter to box, and a variety of small tasks to bring everything up to current codes.
After removing the old Federal Pacific box, we found evidence of arcing in the back, and one of the 15A breakers was “welded” in place. Had to use a pry bar to get it out, and broke it in the process.
Thanks for the advice everyone. Replacing it was a good move. My bank account is much lighter, but I’ll sleep easier now.
Good job on replacing the panel. I had a new one installed earlier this year, went from a 24 space panel with too many tandem breakers and a few double taps to a 42 space panel with no tandems and no double taps (and room for spares). This thread reminded me to add a calendar reminder to check and tighten the connections in 2 years. A loose neutral connection in the old panel almost caused a fire this year, so I am adding checking of the connections to my periodic maintenance list.
I am finding Google calendar to be great for reminding me to do stuff like this. Clean out the dryer vent? It’s on the calendar and will remind me to do it. Same thing with exercising water valves.
Glad to hear it wasn’t just a tale spread among electricians that these breakers are dangerous. You get a generator receptacle installed during the same effort?
It’s scheduled for next week. The guy that installed my box recommended someone else for the transfer switch and gen hookup. I had a quote from that (other) electrician to install it, and he was aware that our neighborhood had the “widowmaker” boxes. When I emailed him pics of the new installation, he returned another quote for exactly half the original.
I told my wife we should find where electricians have their Halloween parties, and go as a pair of Stab Lok circuit breakers. We’d win for most frightening costume.
The most horrible part of this debacle is that Federal Pacific panels are responsible for over 2000 house fires and numerous deaths every year, to this day. Ordinarily a product like this would be recalled, but it would cost billions of dollars to replace them all, and no one has the money for that, certainly not the manufacturer which went out of business years ago.
I lived in a rent house in Texas that had these. I got the hell shocked out of me flipping back the breaker that always popped over and over. I got knocked back. It was horrible. I used a mop handle after that.
Get rid of these if you got them still. I’m glad you got them changed out.
Fifteen-ish years ago I was preparing to sell my house, when one day a breaker tripped and couldn’t be reset. I read about how to replace a breaker, and went to out to purchase what I needed. That’s when I found out about Federal Pacific breakers.
I got a quote to replace the entire box, but I didn’t want to spend that much. Instead, I ordered a FP breaker (it was way more expensive than a “regular” breaker) and replaced it myself, sweating bullets the entire time, wearing rubber boots and shaking like a leaf. All went well.
The buyer wanted an expedited closing and signed a waiver that he did not want a home inspection! The house is still there (I drive by every few weeks).
Cite? Sorry to demand a cite but I could see it being 2000 house fires total, with a few more each year. But if it was that many every year it sounds like something that would trigger some sort of mandatory replacement, where structures with these breakers are not considered to be habitable.
With that said these things are a major concern. 51 percentwon’t trip?!