Heres hoping there isnt a bbq tomorrow.

**deathgodusmc** · 01-10-12, 09:12 PM

Im not moving it im just replacing the breaker box. Good thing two i just looked out of curiousity. If this box was bigger and could hold the additional 6 slots i want it would cost me 110 for one breaker, 70 for another, and 40 a piece for the other 2. I bought the whole thing with the main breaker and 5 smaller ones for 88 bucks. I guess federal pacific shit is getting hard to come by.

**Stealthyking** · 01-10-12, 10:15 PM

Hey, can u put me in your will to receive one of your beautifully built engines?? thanks bro.

haha for real tho, Dont get hurt.

**roadhog0** · 01-11-12, 10:40 AM

This sounds like what my dad did wiring up the trailer brakes and stuff on the family truck. I had to trace it all once and the wrong colors for everything is just a mind fuck.... Dont get fried man! We want you back in one piece!!

**deathgodusmc** · 01-11-12, 11:17 AM

Well its up and everything is running. I didnt even singe a hair. I wish the one main power cable was an inch longer but it is what it is. On to the next project. Now i have to change this from a studio layout to a home. My wife likes the open space but i like walls. Not that a 1400 sq ft room is a bad thing but i hate looking at everything. So now i start converting it into a 3 bedroom and while im at it the living room and master bedroom will both get fireplaces.

**moving-target** · 01-11-12, 11:57 AM

maybe you should just burn the house down and collect the insurance

**DancingCorpse** · 01-11-12, 11:57 AM

Hey, at least it isn't like my moms home, for 7 years there was a light switch in the utility room that did supposedly nothing. Then by chance one day we found it controlled the ceiling fan in the master bathroom on the complete other side of the house, and absolutely nothing else (we found that out when we re wired). Out was quite literally the most useless switch I have ever seen, including ones intentionally not hooked up to anything.

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**deputyfestus** · 01-11-12, 05:40 PM

Originally Posted by DancingCorpse

Hey, at least it isn't like my moms home, for 7 years there was a light switch in the utility room that did supposedly nothing. Then by chance one day we found it controlled the ceiling fan in the master bathroom on the complete other side of the house, and absolutely nothing else (we found that out when we re wired). Out was quite literally the most useless switch I have ever seen, including ones intentionally not hooked up to anything.

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lol that makes me think of this.

**dex71** · 01-11-12, 06:39 PM

DG- There is a reason that FPE (Federal Pacific) shit is hard to come by. It's dangerous......and shit. The gov't actually shut their asses down. They made horrible panels and breakers. The problem was that the breakers rarely trip, and don't make very good contact to the bus bars in the panels...thanks to idiotic design. They found many a house that had burned, and still not one breaker tripped. You won't find an electrician anywhere who doesn't recommend immediate replacement....and not for the coin, but because it is well-known that they are actually pretty damn dangerous.

They still make some replacement parts (I think the company that makes them is a subsidiary of Square D), and they comply to todays standards, but they are spendy. And at the end of the day, you are taking a perfectly fine breaker, and putting it in a shit panel. The smart money replaces the box....like you did.

And he had an outdoor disconnect switch outside of the bathroom?? WTF

And Corpse.....I've run into that. It may have been an old switch for an attic vent fan (sometimes people would hide them in utility closets and such...out of sight, but accessible). At one point, Happy Homeowner may have robbed the switch leg to power his fancy new fart fan. Back in the day, the attic fan was the easiest power for Happy to grab, since it was within sight, and above the insulation.

**deathgodusmc** · 01-11-12, 10:39 PM

Originally Posted by dex71

DG- There is a reason that FPE (Federal Pacific) shit is hard to come by. It's dangerous......and shit. The gov't actually shut their asses down. They made horrible panels and breakers. The problem was that the breakers rarely trip, and don't make very good contact to the bus bars in the panels...thanks to idiotic design. They found many a house that had burned, and still not one breaker tripped. You won't find an electrician anywhere who doesn't recommend immediate replacement....and not for the coin, but because it is well-known that they are actually pretty damn dangerous.

They still make some replacement parts (I think the company that makes them is a subsidiary of Square D), and they comply to todays standards, but they are spendy. And at the end of the day, you are taking a perfectly fine breaker, and putting it in a shit panel. The smart money replaces the box....like you did.

And he had an outdoor disconnect switch outside of the bathroom?? WTF

I can believe every word you said about the box being shit. I thought all 4 breakers were on but appearntly the bottom two are hung upside down. I didnt need them at the time so it didnt concern me. Then i started rewiring everything and noticed some of the wiring wasnt bad but nothing worked. So i took a better look and found the breakers were actually off. So like anyone else would do i turned them on. Not a good idea sparks started flying everywhere yet the breaker didnt throw. I had to turn it back off in order for it to stop.

Definitely the highlight of my day sticking my hand back into a box sparking and smoking. So yeah i would agree it was a shit box. I did however find a wire that was hoooked up wrong. Oddly enough it was in the cut off box for the bathroom. I didnt think much of it until you told me about them.

**SpecOpsScott** · 01-11-12, 11:06 PM

Originally Posted by dex71

DG- There is a reason that FPE (Federal Pacific) shit is hard to come by. It's dangerous......and shit. The gov't actually shut their asses down. They made horrible panels and breakers. The problem was that the breakers rarely trip, and don't make very good contact to the bus bars in the panels...thanks to idiotic design. They found many a house that had burned, and still not one breaker tripped. You won't find an electrician anywhere who doesn't recommend immediate replacement....and not for the coin, but because it is well-known that they are actually pretty damn dangerous.

Wow, i havent heard that name in a long time. A couple of builders in our area used them in the late 70s early 80s by the thousands, and i had the pleasure working with them in the 90s when doing HVAC retrofits. Like you said, dangerous shit. And the cheaply made extremely expensive Mexican replacements were all we could get because no American company would put their name on a breaker that would fit an FPE box!