powerplay
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I was asked by a customer with an old Federal Panel if it was worth changing the old black breakers for new ones.... any safety issues with old breakers?
I was asked by a customer with an old Federal Panel if it was worth changing the old black breakers for new ones?
I was asked by a customer with an old Federal Panel if it was worth changing the old black breakers for new ones.... any safety issues with old breakers?
FPE equipment was notorious for it's tendency to start fires. The issues were just as related to the bus bars as the breakers themselves, so even if you did replace the breakers, you have only addressed half of the potential dangers. As was said, just replace the entire panel with something new, forget patching together the old "Fire Probability Enhancer" devices.
I was asked by a customer with an old Federal Panel if it was worth changing the old black breakers for new ones.... any safety issues with old breakers?
Hope you have a lot of insurnce. Tell the customer that he is throwing good money after bad. Both of you would be safer to go with a new panel and breakers by another company.Remenber reading about 10 years ago that one of the fly by night breaker manufacturing company lost their UL approval due to their lying about the number of their breakers that failed in house testing. At a recent IAEI class one of the speakers said that some made in China boot leg breakers looked so good on the outside that the manufacture could not tell until they took the boot leg breakers apart. The boot leg brekers even had the hologram sticker dead on. garbo
Have you checked what the replacements will cost? Especially if you need any GFCI's or larger than 60amp 2 pole breakers? We will not even get into potential AFCI requirements at this point.
FPE equipment was notorious for it's tendency to start fires. The issues were just as related to the bus bars as the breakers themselves, so even if you did replace the breakers, you have only addressed half of the potential dangers. As was said, just replace the entire panel with something new, forget patching together the old "Fire Probability Enhancer" devices.
He was more concerned about updating the home to match his renovation. The mix of old solid black and grey breakers with black handles he thought was worn out through time, and also wanting to update it to look new. I had told him the panel cover would still look old. No specialty breakers, but I guess it would look funny if we updated breakers and an issue occurred after spending a couple hundred bucks.
I had heard that they do not trip easily. Is the problem with bus bars overheating an issue with the detiriorating insulation on bus?...or due to trip response time ?
I reckon the second warm and fuzzy felling you got was way better than the first.
Couple hundred bucks might only replace 4 or 5 single pole breakers or only 1 or 2 double pole breakers.
The ones that have problems supposedly do not trip period.
The FPE breakers in this residential application are "NC" types that are about $10 bucks at Home Depot, not the "NA" Commercial ones that are more expensive.
Is it the old black handle ones that are having issues with not tripping?? ...are the newer color coded ones an issue also?
No. IMO you replace the entire service.
I dug this up from an earlier post you can copy and paste:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa80/chris_kennedy/FPEWarning.jpg
I recall seeing a warning letter put out by FPE (by the insistance of their lawyers, no doubt) in the late 70's early 80's stating the same thing as the above label, not to reset a tripped molded case breaker with specific frame types. These were large industrial panels in TELCO central offices
with MCBs in the 100-800A range. I tried searching but could not find the letter (maybe someone can help.)
I remember the time when (working for a testing co) I was racking out a 4000A 480V FPE air frame main breaker from a switchboard with xfmr energized on line side. No PPE back then!! All of a sudden while racking we heard a loud "Clunk", we all looked at each other.....WTF!!
When we got the breaker out we found that the line side phase B Stab (looks like a heavy copper pipe) fell off the back of the breaker (broken weld.) :jawdrop:This is a pole piece that engages the stationary fingers. Had it gone phase to phase on the line side, I would not be telling this story......yeah..!
ask me what I think of FPE...!!