Money Pit

Several years ago I ran an article in the HomeTeam News about the problems with FP panels. Since then I have had a first hand experience with a main panel failing in my own house. I purchased a house that needed a complete up-date. I decided to live in the house, wile I did the much-needed repairs. The house came with a thirty-year-old Federal Pacific panel as the main, and the plan was to replace it after I had finished all of the other electrical work. That did not happen! What did happen was I received a call at work from my wife telling me this; “We have a problem”. “Do you remember the movie Money Pit”? “Do you remember the scene in the kitchen where the electrical wires were burning through the walls”? “Well that is the same problem we have”. What had happened is an old wall plug had failed under use and created a direct short. This is when a circuit breaker should do its job, and shut off the electricity to that circuit, it did not. Fortunately it happened during the day when my wife was home to shut off the main breaker. In a short period of time the electrical-short had caused the wires in the wall to burn, and the breaker that was supposed to shut off the current in the case of an emergence had melted it self in the panel, and it was still on! I never spent another night in that house with the FP panel.