Electrical Service Panel

Photographs of the electrical service panel found during home inspections.

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mast head
The
masthead where the power cables come to the home when they are
overhead. There is not much of one here, but the cables have a little
slack at the end to allow water to drip off.

The
service entrance cables (electrical power cables) are going through a
tree. If the branches fall, they can take the cables with them.

FPE panel box
If
you look close, you can see the “FPE” symbol. Federal
Pacific panel boxes are not safe, but this one has been on the home
for forty years without issue. The real problem comes with the
breakers not staying in place.

inside the panel box
This
is the service panel after the interior cover has been removed. The
bottom right breaker almost fell out on me. Otherwise, there are no
burn marks on the wiring, but there is a problem.

two wires on the same breaker
On
the bottom breaker, two wires are going into the same spot. This is
called double lugging, and it can lead to problems. The solution is
to have another breaker installed for this circuit, but FPE breakers
are hard to come by now.

grounding electrode
An electrode bar is hammered into the earth to provide grounding for the home. They are eight feet long. The problem can be the tops which rust off or are knocked off by lawnmowers, so then the system is no longer grounded.

solar panels
These
are some solar panels that have been set up on the lion’s house at
the Houston Zoo. I have not seen these on any home yet, so I thought
I would share these with you.

One problem that arises on older homes is the updating of the electrical system done in stages. This can be done correctly, but sometimes you will see work where someone has used what is available for a new job, and they did not do things correctly. Inside your panel, you have to look at the wiring and the breakers where they are attached. In this photograph, you will see a thicker white wire and a thicker black wire hooked into breakers. The breakers are rated for 30 amps, and this wire is for 60 amps. If you are not sure about wire sizes, look at your panel to see that the wires going into the breakers with the same amperage look to be the same thickness. If you notice differences in sizes, you may have a problem.

One of the additional circuits needed for older electrical boxes is often for a shed or outdoor spa. This wire had been severed, but there were more problems than being cut. To run the cable from the house to the shed, the installer brought the wire out of a conduit tube in the soffit. The other half of the wire was dangling. The wire in the picture runs to the shed by being buried under the ground. At this location and near where the shed had stood, we have the wire only barely under the surface. Yard equipment or digging can chop into this line. First, the wire needs to be in a properly secured conduit attached to the house. Once going underground, we should continue that conduit, which should be buried below the frost line for your area. Do not think because the wire is in a conduit, so I do not need to worry about the depth. You want this deep enough to avoid problems.

Most people may never open up the cover for their electrical panel. Some homeowners may not know that there are any problems, or they may not recognize that something could be a problem. This situation happens more often than some may know. The open space between the breaker and the inner panel can allow pests to enter, allow someone to poke a screwdriver into the interior which could then touch a live wire, or cause loose breakers to disengage which can lead to arcing and fires. A knockout cover fixes this problem.

Unattached conduits at their ends and conduits not attached to the walls are also problems which go unnoticed by many homeowners. The problem here is that the wires can become damaged. Damaged wires are potentially dangerous for electrical shocks and for causing fires.