The electrical panel: what to look for, and when to replace it
The gray box in the basement is the one part of the house that can start a fire without anyone touching it. The brands with a history, the signs of trouble, and what an upgrade involves.
Most homeowners open the electrical panel twice a year, to reset a breaker, and never look at anything but the switch. The panel deserves a closer look, because it is where every circuit in the house comes together, and when one fails it fails hot. Here is how to look, what to look for, and when to call.
Open the door, not the cover
The door on the panel is meant to be opened. The cover behind it, held by screws, is not; behind it are the bus bars, live at all times, and touching one is not a repair you get to learn from. Everything below can be seen with the door open.
The brands with a history
Two lines of panels, common in houses from the 1950s through the 1980s, have a documented record of breakers that fail to trip under a fault. If you have one, electricians will tell you to replace it, and many home inspectors and some insurers require it.
- Federal Pacific Electric, Stab-Lok breakers. The name is on the door label, and the breakers have a distinctive red or orange stripe on the handle.
- Zinsco, also sold as GTE-Sylvania. Colorful breaker handles, with a bus design that corrodes and lets breakers weld in place.
Others draw opinions in the trade, but those two are the ones with a consensus. If the label says either, get an electrician's opinion before anything else in this piece.
Signs of trouble
- A breaker that trips repeatedly. It is doing its job; the circuit is overloaded or has a fault, and resetting it again is not a fix.
- A breaker that will not stay reset, or one that is warm to the touch.
- A smell of hot plastic, or scorching on the face of the panel.
- Buzzing or crackling from inside.
- Rust, or water stains, on or below the panel. Water gets in through the service cable from outside and corrodes the bus.
- Lights that dim when the air conditioner or the dryer starts. Sometimes normal; sometimes a loose neutral, which is dangerous.
- Two wires under one breaker terminal, or a breaker that does not match the panel brand. Both are common in houses that have been worked on by handy owners, and both are wrong.
- No room. Every slot full, and a project coming.
Fuses
A fuse box is not itself dangerous, and a 60-amp fused service in a small house can be adequate. The trouble is that a blown fuse is easily replaced with a bigger one, and a 30-amp fuse on a 15-amp circuit is a wire that can catch fire before the fuse blows. If the fuse box has been modified, or the house is being sold, it is usually replaced.
What an upgrade involves
A panel replacement, typically to 200 amps, is a day's work for an electrician: the utility disconnects power, the old panel comes out, the new one goes in with new breakers, arc-fault and ground-fault protection where the current code requires them, and a whole-house surge protector, which is now required in most places and is cheap. The permit and inspection are part of it. Expect the house to be without power for most of the day.
It is also the moment to plan for what is coming: an electric vehicle charger, a heat pump, an induction range or a heat pump water heater each want a large circuit, and a panel with room and a service sized for them is far cheaper now than as a second visit.
The habit
Once a year, open the door, look, and smell. Label the breakers if they are not. Know which one is the main. And every time a breaker trips more than once, call, because the panel is not the problem, and the problem is somewhere in the house.
Trades this touches: Electrical.
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