When should electrical equipment be replaced?

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designer82

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The electrical panels in a multi-family building are pretty old, around 30 years or so.

I did a site survey and there were no code violations.

Is there an amount of time that the equipment should be replaced with new regardless or is the typical consensus to just run it to the ground?


One thing that comes to mind is the SC interrupt of the equip. I know the available fault current in this area has increased over the years and if the equip. from 30 years ago is only rated to say x and now over the years the available fault current is say 1.6x. would that be cause enough to consider a replacement?
 
30 years old is not that old. If the equipment is indoors and has never been subject to consistent overloads, it could easily go another 30 years.

The short circuit rating of new residential equipment will likely be equal to what you have.

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I think if it was 50 years old it would be a good time to be looking at changing it out when there was an opportunity to do so. At 30 years if it's in good condition, I'd be inclined to leave it be. I doubt the short circuit current available has changed enough to require any changes to the equipment but you never know. I doubt many homeowners are going to care one way or the other since it's there and it's been safe all these years why should they change it out?
 
I agree with the posters here for the most part. A couple of points. My background is power electronics. In that field, quite a lot of equipment has been been improved in terms of better energy efficiency. To that extent, there has been more recent changes.
 
There are other considerations besides just age.
We have a lot of Pushmatic panels around here with Bulldog breakers. They're suitable for interrupting maybe 5k Amps, and never had an AIC rating.
I'm sure they were fine when installed, but what happens when the neighborhood distribution is upgraded and a lot more than 5 kA becomes available?
(admittedly, this is reaching back more than 30 years)
 
Stuff that gets handled a lot will need replaced much sooner than stuff that's left alone. Or if it's in an environment that's damaging to the equipment, more frequent replacement.

That said, 30 years is nothing for some equipment while 12 years is too much

I'm thinking stuff that gets handled a lot like devices. I think 25 years is a good time frame to look at total replacement. But as mentuoned in the OP, most people just want to run it into the ground.

Environments that are damaging to the equipment would be something like panels, time clocks, etc that you would find in a pool pump room.

Stuff that gets installed and then pretty much left alone....panels, safety switches, meters, etc all go a long time. In multi-family, I wouldn't look at replacing it en masse until there had been at least a couple of repair cases.
 
drcampbell said:
There are other considerations besides just age.
We have a lot of Pushmatic panels around here with Bulldog breakers. They're suitable for interrupting maybe 5k Amps, and never had an AIC rating.
I'm sure they were fine when installed, but what happens when the neighborhood distribution is upgraded and a lot more than 5 kA becomes available?
(admittedly, this is reaching back more than 30 years)
Click to expand...
More like 50 years since the Bulldog name was used.
The present method of determining AIC ratings became mandatory in the early 80s or so.
 
masterinbama said:
30 years old is not that old. If the equipment is indoors and has never been subject to consistent overloads, it could easily go another 30 years.
Click to expand...

Much of the 25Hz Amtrak 138KV/12.5KV WAS-NYC catanary system dates back to circa 1915 when the Pennsylvania Railroad built it.

It's scary to even look at the pictures. It reminds me of old Frankenstein movies....
 
While the panels themselves may be good for a long time, each manufacturer has recommendations for "life" of the given individual breakers that is far shorter than the actual panels. Probably should check with them on the particular panel and breaker. Old (past mfg recommendations) breakers can pose hazards related to failure to properly trip on overloads, or ground /arc faults on those breakers. Here is info from Schneider the maker of Square D.
 
Fred B said:
While the panels themselves may be good for a long time, each manufacturer has recommendations for "life" of the given individual breakers that is far shorter than the actual panels. Probably should check with them on the particular panel and breaker. Old (past mfg recommendations) breakers can pose hazards related to failure to properly trip on overloads, or ground /arc faults on those breakers. Here is info from Schneider the maker of Square D.
Click to expand...
Those manuals are for the Square D line of industrial molded case breakers. I wonder what the life of their QO line is?

A few years ago I was inspecting a panelboard where a contractor had recently installed a QO breaker that was close to 50 years old (it did not have the Visi-trip feature) into a new building.
 
designer82 said:
The electrical panels in a multi-family building are pretty old, around 30 years or so.

I did a site survey and there were no code violations.

Is there an amount of time that the equipment should be replaced with new regardless or is the typical consensus to just run it to the ground?


One thing that comes to mind is the SC interrupt of the equip. I know the available fault current in this area has increased over the years and if the equip. from 30 years ago is only rated to say x and now over the years the available fault current is say 1.6x. would that be cause enough to consider a replacement?
Click to expand...

Two points:

1. In general, equipment replacement really depends on the application/industry. For example, if you are the utility company and have a yard full of replacement equipment, with a line crew on standby, then the run-to-failure model makes sense. Just wait for the equipment to blow up then change it out. But if you are a manufacturing plant, where an equipment failure would cause extended downtime and loss of revenue, then maintenance/testing would be required to assess the equipment condition to predict and schedule when to replace the equipment (scheduled outage is better than forced outage). Either way, when to change out the equipment comes down to the economics. The objective should always be to get the most benefit for the least amount of cost.

2. The utility may have significantly changed its infrastructure, switching configuration or calculation method for the available fault current, so you should ALWAYS request updated information to select the proper short-circuit ratings.


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drcampbell said:
There are other considerations besides just age.
We have a lot of Pushmatic panels around here with Bulldog breakers. They're suitable for interrupting maybe 5k Amps, and never had an AIC rating.
I'm sure they were fine when installed, but what happens when the neighborhood distribution is upgraded and a lot more than 5 kA becomes available?
(admittedly, this is reaching back more than 30 years)
Click to expand...
I think this is a good point though. If the equipment in question is of a vintage that is no longer made or supported, replacing it may be prudent. The reason is that once something goes totally obsolete, like Pushmatic, anything that needs to be replaced or any additions will involve having to use either used parts, "third party" aftermarket parts, or at best, "New Old Stock" picked up as surplus. Some people are not comfortable with having old used or questionable after-market components used in their houses knowing that their very lives may be depending on that equipment functioning properly.
 
I wouldn't replace equipment based on age alone, unless there's a great scheduled-shutdown vs unscheduled-shutdown concern.
 
Jraef said:
I think this is a good point though. If the equipment in question is of a vintage that is no longer made or supported, replacing it may be prudent. The reason is that once something goes totally obsolete, like Pushmatic, anything that needs to be replaced or any additions will involve having to use either used parts, "third party" aftermarket parts, or at best, "New Old Stock" picked up as surplus. Some people are not comfortable with having old used or questionable after-market components used in their houses knowing that their very lives may be depending on that equipment functioning properly.
Click to expand...
I love how 30 year old equipment is being called vintage.

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We don't change them unless they're giving problems. With a couple exceptions such as a screw in fuse type, federal pacific brand that kind of thing.

It might be a good time to look in some, perhaps spot check to see if any wires are undersized.
 
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