Hurricane damaged panels

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slect

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Major damage along the South Florida Coast.
Salt water in some areas rose above meter and panel locations. Our policy is replace all electrical panel boards, meter sockets,
recepacles,etc. Basically any electrical piece of equipment that was submerged.
I heard another company is removing all breakers and treating the bus bars and lugs with some type of chemical .
Has anyone heard of this procedure ? Not sure the manufacturer even calls for this ..
thoughts ?
thank you
 
Older panels might have to be replaced due to lack oc device availability. But I would think flushing is sufficient with replacing the breakers, after inspection of bus bars.
 
So, is there anyone here that can tell me how this situation is handled when it comes to restoring power.
So they say there are X number of customers without power. Do the power companies actually restore power to the home/business that had flood damage above meterbase or panels? Or do those places need to be have meters/panels replaced and passed before restoring power.
 
Im in Houston. Been here for 2 flood events including Harvey.
Not sure what the protocol is but Centerpointe is not out checking areas for flooding and opening circuits as a result.
The kid that died from electrocution was in my MIL neighborhood. I based my capstone project on a network that would prevent a similar accident.
My guess is if a line didn’t open from fault, it stayed energized.
I have also read that NEMA document and I’m wary that the same ppl that benefit from sales are advising total replacement.
Participants of a game should not be allowed to ALSO be the authority of the game.
I helped a friend when his house was under 4 feet for 2 weeks. After water receded, he dried out, dehumidified, did what was logical and expedient.
His house had power the whole time BTW. Even while submerged for 2 weeks.
After about 6 weeks (and reading the NEMA document), I megged every circuit.
It all tested fine. He did replace all devices but not 1 piece of wire.
Here we are 5 years later and no issues.
Not saying that would be the case each time. All factors have to be considered when making a judgment on what gets replaced (like salt water, etc).
IMO educated judgment prevails.
If one doesn’t possess that education then find someone who does.
And if not, follow NEMAs advice and replace everything that got wet.


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I am all for saving a customer money but would never attempt to have myself or a company cleaning up any panel that was submersed in water especially salt water. Wonder if your insurance liability would even cover this in the event of a later fire or damage. Years ago I read the extra small fine print that I had. Had a lot of limitations. A few years ago a church member called me to clean his less then year old 200 amp panel after a hundred year flood filled his basement up to top of joist for at least a day. Gave him the bad news that the panel, all the circuit breakers and all the NM cable that was submerged had to be replaced. I installed a used 6 circuit temporary panel to feed a few GFCI receptacles for future contractor to have power for repairs. He got back to me later and said the insurance company paid to have the panel, breakers & cables replaced. I was always not only concerned about life long liability but reliability in all the work I performed. One example always used a 20 amp spec grade toggle switch to feed a residential garbage disposal so I knew switch would outlast next two garbage disposals.
 
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