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(10-10-2022, 11:41 AM)DieselDennis Wrote: Would it not be easier to just get the paint off of the existing panel?
Agreed. Especially if this is a relatively new panel. I'd buy the exact make/model panel. Strip the existing internals and replace with new. Should be easy.
Of course, I suspect that the panel is good as-is. Maybe replace breakers if they were saturated. I have no clue what the OP calls "contaminated". We would need pics to access.
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10-10-2022, 07:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-10-2022, 07:47 PM by Snipe Hunter.)
What seems to be the problem with paint in the panel? Paint inside new panels is pretty common.
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(10-10-2022, 07:47 PM)Snipe Hunter Wrote: What seems to be the problem with paint in the panel? Paint inside new panels is pretty common.
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"Although I have never seen an electrician do it for $1000 unless it was someone that knew someone or family"
I saw it once. New mast, meter housing, panel, and addition of subpanel in basement. The catch? It was 2010. Stuff was cheaper, building was slow, and the guy had a spot to fill for his crew, so he gave my brother a deal.
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(10-12-2022, 12:43 AM)lincmercguy Wrote: "Although I have never seen an electrician do it for $1000 unless it was someone that knew someone or family"
I saw it once. New mast, meter housing, panel, and addition of subpanel in basement. The catch? It was 2010. Stuff was cheaper, building was slow, and the guy had a spot to fill for his crew, so he gave my brother a deal.
$1000 isn't a heavy up. It's just a taking out the old panel and installing a new one. A common solution is to leave the old one there and gut it. Set a new panel next to it and run new conductors between panels. Use the old one for a junction box where the wires are just extended to the new one. Screw the panel door shut on the old one
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(10-12-2022, 12:43 AM)lincmercguy Wrote: "Although I have never seen an electrician do it for $1000 unless it was someone that knew someone or family"
I saw it once. New mast, meter housing, panel, and addition of subpanel in basement. The catch? It was 2010. Stuff was cheaper, building was slow, and the guy had a spot to fill for his crew, so he gave my brother a deal.
I had mine done for about $1200 around 2002-2003 or so. In our case, it was pretty much necessary since the original was an old Federal Pacific panel and I didn't want to have to deal with getting new, compatible but supposedly better (since they were supposed to actually open during an overload), breakers from ebay when I wanted to add circuits. $3K is about what I expect in today's market for a new panel and circuits.
Unless you occasionally get a long term power outage (more than a day) due to storms or have a disconnect between the meter and the panel, I don't really consider replacing a panel a DIY'er type of job. If you wanted to DIY it as others have mentioned, you can use the existing panel as a pass-through and use a sub-panel as your primary panel, but then I don't think that will accomplish what you really want since the same paint splattered panel will be there and unless there is some kit that allows you to connect wires directly to the bus bars (or remove the bus bars and connect directly to the disconnect) in the panel bypassing the need for a breaker, you would still need to use a breaker in order to safely feed the sub-panel. In the sub-panel I put in my workshop, it appeared to me the bus bars were an integral part of the main disconnect, but I didn't take it apart to investigate since I don't have to worry about having a way to shut off power to it and my main panel had been replaced by then.
For $3K, I think I'd live with paint splatter on my panel as long as it still does its job, I can still get breakers for it and the circuit numbers and/or circuit ID label is not obscured. For those last two, I'd just see if scraping the paint from the circuit numbers revealed them and/or if the circuit ID label had some or all circuits that were unreadable as to what they were due to paint splatter, I'd just shut off each one and see what lost power and re-label it.
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(10-12-2022, 02:37 PM)Snipe Hunter Wrote: $1000 isn't a heavy up. It's just a taking out the old panel and installing a new one. A common solution is to leave the old one there and gut it. Set a new panel next to it and run new conductors between panels. Use the old one for a junction box where the wires are just extended to the new one. Screw the panel door shut on the old one
I am curious on this, are the bus bars removable from the main shutoff or is there a kit to secure the wiring to the bus bars without a breaker (other than the main)? Otherwise, the only way I can see how a DIY'er can do this without still having to use a circuit breaker to feed the new panel would be to drill and tap the bus bars and use lugs to attach your two hots to, in order to completely bypass the need for circuit breakers, but I am not sure that is code compliant or something that would be OK for a DIY'er to do (one of my projects at work that I oversaw, we had to do this for a life-safety, smoke control system we installed since it was cheaper than getting a breaker that was 4x the FLA rating of the fans, but that was electricians performing the work and it is something they do regularly). Per my previous reply on this subject, when I installed a sub-panel in my workshop, I want to say that the bus bars did not look to be removable from the main shutoff on that panel but I didn't investigate that too much because I never have to worry, if I ever have to replace that panel since I can always shut off power to it at my main panel.
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Wow. Why does this stuff cost so much?
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I can't speak to the cost but I did my own 30 years ago, called the electric company and they pulled the meter and dropped the service. I replaced the meter base and panel, my only surprise was when I called the number provided to have the power restored and the meter placed, I was told they would not do that until they received word from the city inspector. I had my permits but it still delayed the reconnect by a day.
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(10-13-2022, 07:03 AM)pprobus Wrote: I am curious on this, are the bus bars removable from the main shutoff or is there a kit to secure the wiring to the bus bars without a breaker (other than the main)? Otherwise, the only way I can see how a DIY'er can do this without still having to use a circuit breaker to feed the new panel would be to drill and tap the bus bars and use lugs to attach your two hots to, in order to completely bypass the need for circuit breakers, but I am not sure that is code compliant or something that would be OK for a DIY'er to do (one of my projects at work that I oversaw, we had to do this for a life-safety, smoke control system we installed since it was cheaper than getting a breaker that was 4x the FLA rating of the fans, but that was electricians performing the work and it is something they do regularly). Per my previous reply on this subject, when I installed a sub-panel in my workshop, I want to say that the bus bars did not look to be removable from the main shutoff on that panel but I didn't investigate that too much because I never have to worry, if I ever have to replace that panel since I can always shut off power to it at my main panel.
They turn off the main breaker and gut the panel. Leave the old main breaker in place. The buses are removed. They're connected to the main breaker with bolts and nuts. They run new conductors from those bolts to the new panel's main breaker lugs. Then they pigtail new wires to extend to the new panel's breakers next to the old one.
Still, If I saw paint in my panel. I wouldn't do anything at all. It's commonplace and I've never heard of it causing any problems. If it's a newer Square-D OC panel, maybe you can get it replaced under the recall.
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