Quote:
Originally Posted by ZBB
The main panel was already full, and a sub-panel had been installed next to it that only had a couple open slots. I was worried about overloading the house and never called an electrician for an estimate...
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15+ years or ago, I decided I needed to get rid of the ticking time bombs that were my Federal Pacific breaker panels. I got quotes from a number of electricians and all were insanely high based on my known costs for the materials and the estimated labor hours. Finally I said the heck with it and decided to do it myself. Upgraded the service from dual 100A to dual 200A with a 100A sub-panel:
As you can see from the paint outlines in the second picture, the Flaming Pacific panels were not the original ones on the house - I think the original service was with an A-base meter. The FP panels were on the backboard extension with the yellow paint. The oldest wiring in the house (with a single horizontal outlet per room) goes to a 2-circuit fuse box on each floor, with both the hot and neutral fused. More modern wiring went to the FP panels with no intervening fusing. Which, given FP's history, probably was a bad idea.
I got the new panels mounted on a new backboard and the conduit cut, bent and threaded in advance. Then, under the cover of darkness on 2 consecutive nights the 1st floor and then the 2nd floor were moved over to the new panels.
The second picture with the digital meters was taken a few years later - those are fancy ones that change the display to "TAMPER" if you pull the meter from the base. When I did the swap-out I still had the spinning-disc mechanical meters so nobody noticed anything.
I posted these pics quite a few years ago on a wiring forum and got told they were "electrician porn".
Edited to add: For those not "in the know", the 2 larger panels are Square D QO series 40-position panels. The one in the middle is their smaller 100A main lug cousin. Square D is probably the best residential / light commercial panel you can get. Which is odd, because their parent company Schneider also owns Federal Pacific (Federal Pioneer in Canada).