main panel replacement
- Thread starter Samz
- Start date
- Status
- Location
- Lockport, IL
- Occupation
- Semi-Retired Electrical Engineer
This is not a question of what the code requires. Rather, it is a question of whether the code applies. The NEC has little to say about how far you must go to bring an existing system up to the current code version, if you perform a modification to that existing system.
Every AHJ will have an opinion or a policy on that question. It is common to say that you only have to upgrade the things you touch. So if you replace a service panel, you only have to make sure the panel itself meets code. You didn?t touch the branch circuits, other than to disconnect them from the old breaker and reconnect them to the new breaker. That is not, in my view, a modification to the branch circuits.
I can say that I had this very work done on my house earlier this year. The electrician replaced an old panel with a new one. Most of the circuits in my house do not have a ground wire, and I did not ask the electrician to do anything about that. The Inspector only looked at the panel itself, at the meter, at the grounding electrode conductor, and the new ground rod.
Every AHJ will have an opinion or a policy on that question. It is common to say that you only have to upgrade the things you touch. So if you replace a service panel, you only have to make sure the panel itself meets code. You didn?t touch the branch circuits, other than to disconnect them from the old breaker and reconnect them to the new breaker. That is not, in my view, a modification to the branch circuits.
I can say that I had this very work done on my house earlier this year. The electrician replaced an old panel with a new one. Most of the circuits in my house do not have a ground wire, and I did not ask the electrician to do anything about that. The Inspector only looked at the panel itself, at the meter, at the grounding electrode conductor, and the new ground rod.
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