Moving a wall over the panel (what to do?)

[slugger]

Oh man. It's a disappointing day. We bought a new house and we've been planning some major renovations. We are really excited about moving a few walls around to give the 1980 home a much more functional and modern floorplan. One of the first phases of the project was to replace the dated load center that is rusted and well beyond capacity. But the original wiring is all grounded, functional and looks to be in good shape. So we aren't planning to do a rewire and anything to that extent for the electrical... I've purchased all the equipment to swap out the panel and I had plans to start the project this weekend. And today I started making a more detailed plan and I notice a HUGE problem. I really can't believe I didn't notice it until now:

The panel is in the basement in the center of the house mounted to a central load bearing wall. About 90% of the circuits exit the panel and go straight up through the top plate above into a finished wall. AND WE HAVE PLANS TO REMOVE THIS WALL. Ugh. I am sick to my stomach. We have our hearts set on moving this wall. It will make the kitchen much more spacious. And improve traffic flow in the main artery of the house...

I haven't opened up the wall above yet... I probably will tomorrow but I've done some measuring down below. And all those circuits (including a 100 amp feeder to a sub panel for the second floor) are in that wall in approximately the same location. See my current floorplan below where I identify them with pink XXXs. And see the red wall which we want to remove. And see the green wall which we plan to add to replace the red wall. Then you can look at my proposed floorplan where we have the new kitchen cabinets along the new wall. The area where the circuits come up into the wall is planned to be a full height pantry cabinet. And if you want to see the panel and circuits down below you can watch the video linked.

This forum has been helpful to me in the past. And I value the experience, wisdom and problem solving ability of our members. So I decided to post and ask for HELP!!!

Anyone got ideas? (I'll provide a few of my thoughts in a subsequent post)

What would you say to a customer who hired you to deal with this?

What would you do if this was your own personal project?

Current floorplan:

Original Floorplan with wall changed noted hosted at ImgBB

Image Original Floorplan with wall changed noted hosted on ImgBB

ibb.co

Proposed floorplan:

New Proposed Floorplan hosted at ImgBB

Image New Proposed Floorplan hosted on ImgBB

ibb.co

Video of panel and circuits:

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Thanks for any input you can provide. Please don't tell me "rewire it all". That will make me cry I'm looking for easier solutions that will meet 2023 code...

 

[ActionDave]

I am closing this thread in accordance with forum rules. If you are not an electrician, we are not permitted to assist you in performing your own electrical installation.

If installing stuff is not your occupation, then we can’t help you install stuff. You would have had to agree with that rule during the process of registering on the forum.

The reason is that the forum’s owner does not want a person to get an answer to the question they asked, but not get answers to the dozens of other questions they should have asked and were unaware they needed to ask. Mike Holt doesn’t want anyone to get injured by any incidents related to electrical installations. But he also doesn’t want to be sued by the injured party’s relatives on the basis of his forum not telling you enough to keep you safe.