Nesting a new load center in the existing load center's enclosure?

[mtnelect]

A 50+ year old building with a Zinsco panel, the service is not the only problem ! ... And the insurance company has a heads up !!

What's wrong with this picture ?

 

[hillbilly1]

I assume you talking about a real panelboard and not a "loadcenter". If you missed some particular accessory you might have needed a shorter box, as the accessory happened to come with rail extension and cover blank if used. Something like a feed through lugs can do that it to you if not paying attention to all the details.

If you can’t get the order correct with ALL of that info as a dealer, your either lazy, or inept.

 

[mtnelect]

If you are trying to do this without a permit, it will probably work.

 

[electrofelon]

You can probably get a new panelboard (buss and breakers) that will fit in your existing box instead of installing a load center inside the box.

Definitely agree, and this would be a much nicer job than sticking a load center in the cabin and cobng it together. The box dimension sounds like a standard panel board cabinet, for example a Siemens b32 cabinet has those dimensions. A Siemens panel board and trim will probably go right in there, only thing you might not have is the studs in the right place to mount the guts to (the dead front mounts to the guts not the can on the Siemens panel boards). You'd have a much nicer finished product and not some Frankenstein thing with a stupid load center (hate load centers).

 

[kwired]

If you can’t get the order correct with ALL of that info as a dealer, your either lazy, or inept.

If you listed all catalog numbers of something existing but happened to miss say a feed through lug kit, you get a cabinet that is too long for the components you otherwise ordered.

If you were ordering from scratch and didn't have the subfeed lug kit you would have selected the shorter cabinet in the process.

If your salesperson is good with this stuff he might catch the mistake on your list of materials. Pretty certain in many cases they use panel building software and it picks the individual components needed based on information you input.

I did have one time I ordered a NQ panel, 200 amp 3 pole main, feed through lugs. I did not have any three pole breakers on the order but still wanted ability to install three pole breakers and that somehow got confused by the person ordering and I was wondering why it was taking so long to get this panel (before 2020). When it showed up I figured out why it took so long, instead of a usual stock item, it was configured with three phase bus to the feed through lugs, but only had bus fingers for branch breakers on phases A and C - No B phase to connect branch breakers to.

Mistake that I wasn't aware of exactly what it meant was it was written up as having 30 120 volt "prepared spaces and was 120/240 high leg supplied so that is why they configured it that way, yet it had three phase input and three phase feed through lugs.

I got the item I wanted pretty much immediately as it was in stock, and main breaker, main breaker kit and feed through lug kit separately and field assembled them.