300a challenger panel fire hazard?

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My customer has a 300a challenger breaker, his insurance wants it replaced and he wants to know why. I am going to start googling now but I haven't seen any fires myself. My question is whether any of you people have dealt with this, and what can you tell me about it?
 

petersonra

Senior Member
Location
Northern illinois
Occupation
engineer
My customer has a 300a challenger breaker, his insurance wants it replaced and he wants to know why. I am going to start googling now but I haven't seen any fires myself. My question is whether any of you people have dealt with this, and what can you tell me about it?

does it really matter? if the insurance company is requiring it to be replaced he is going to have to do so.

The reality is that there are tens or hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of breakers and panels out there that have a higher than average failure rate, and a few have caused fires. But most of them have worked fine over the years and had absolutely no problems.

It is like aluminum house wiring. There are a relatively few cases where it has been an issue, but they are not all that common.
 
does it really matter? if the insurance company is requiring it to be replaced he is going to have to do so.

The reality is that there are tens or hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of breakers and panels out there that have a higher than average failure rate, and a few have caused fires. But most of them have worked fine over the years and had absolutely no problems.

It is like aluminum house wiring. There are a relatively few cases where it has been an issue, but they are not all that common.

Or, he could use a different insurance provider. This question is for anyone with experience with this issue. Thank you.
 

jaggedben

Senior Member
Location
Northern California
Occupation
Solar and Energy Storage Installer
If you google "Challenger circuit breaker problems" you will get a slew of results, some of which are because Challenger was a spinoff of GTE Sylvania, which bought Zinsco, so they associate Challenger with Zinsco, inappropriately.

To me that's all likely irrelevant, because they are all about small branch breakers in panelboards, and your 300A breaker is presumably not a branch breaker in one of these common types of panelboard. Insurance adjusters don't know, they just see a brand and if it's on their list of bad brands they get huffy.

You probably need to tell someone the breaker model or type at some point, though.
 
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