Yeah, poke the inspector. AFAIK, FPE is the only brand of cicruit breakers to lose their UL listing, and they were delisted years ago. As **Bewildebeest ** said, they have a nasty way of welding internally, so they will never trip and they stay hot, regardless of handle position.
The reason the FPE breaker is so expensive is because it’s old stock, and fairly rare old stock at that. Once they’re gone, they’re gone, and that can’t happen soon enough.
On the hopes you’ve not bought that expensive breaker, put the $90 towards replacing the panel. Square D’s Homeline series is about as good as it gets in “generic” home panels. Or, if you want to go up in quality, check out Square D’s “QO” series, which is commercial/industrial grade stuff.
Now that I’ve verified a few things-the replacement breakers which fit FPE Stab-Lok (American was one manufacturer) have a CSA listing, meaning they are electrically accepted in Canada, but not here in the US. Unlisted electrical equipment makes insurance companies cranky.
I’ll respectfully disagree about QO being commercial/industrial. While it’s an excellent quality residential panel, commercial/industrial is typically bolt-in, which would be NQOD, I believe.
It was my understanding that the compatible breakers made by others were safe. Does it have a UL sticker? The reason they’re expensive is because you have a choice of replacing one expensive breaker, or replacing the whole panel for even more. Most people will choose the cheaper alternative.
Don’t you just hate it when simple home maintenance projects spiral out of control?
The breakers in the box are mostly “Challenger” brand. The one that I paid $$ for is American, has a UL sticker, was made in Mexico.
I pulled my inspector’s report. He did mention “updating” the panel; I only remember him talking about how it would be more modern to have sub panels, but looking at the report he was advising replacement.
Shit, don’t have a jack of all trades person do this. Sure, he could get it done…so could you. It isn’t rocket science. But the question is; will it be done safely? Per code? Will you have a dead guy in your basement two hours into the project?
This is one of the jobs you should never get shocked performing, the meter gets pulled so there is no power coming into the panel at all.
Also, one needs to be on the lookout for careless sharing of the nuetrals when a job like this is done. Many people don’t realise that you can have two opposing circuits share the same nuetral. You have to keep track of which branch circuits went where and which (if any) shared a nuetral and make sure when you put the panel back in you either catch a previous mistake and correct it or don’t make any yourself.
You also have to be aware of any grounding issues that may come up. Your water pipes may not be bonded, your grounding electrode conductor may be corroded away, etc…Just some more stuff to keep an eye out for that an amatuer may not find. There are several other ‘obvious’ things to watch out for when you do a panel upgrade like this that would make me uncomfortable having a non-pro do the job.
You might want to check the UL number on it against UL’s code online. We had an old electric resistance heater at my old job that had been left behind by someone long departed. Its tip switch didn’t work unless you gave it a serious whack. My office mate couldn’t believe that UL would approve such a thing.
The code turned out to be for 12 volt lighting in recreational vehicles. :eek:
