Electrician question

bandaidman

bandaidman

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Feb 11, 2001
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Had a circuit flickering in my house. Went down to box and heard faint arcing noises. Found offending breaker and it had arced/corroded bus bar . It was a 15amp duplex

Service panel is an old I-C-E box. It is 200amp service and completely full.

The house is 90 years old and last upgrade was in 91 per inspection certificate.

Can you replace the busbar in an old box like this? I will definitely call an electrician to do so.

If whole service panel needed to be replaced, what would the cost be of doing so? There are still a few knob tube circuits. Rest modern copper lines, expect for one 70amp circuit which is aluminum.
 
I would suggest abandoning the breaker slot with the damaged bus bar altogether and installing a small sub panel. Remove and additional two breakers that are side by side (different phases if you understand my meaning?) in your existing panel and in their place install a 2 pole breaker to feed the new sub panel. You can then reroute your three now-homeless circuits to the new sub panel. A picture of your panel and the area around it might help determine if this is a viable option or not.
 
Danger, danger, Will Robins.

I'm not sure what you mean by an I-C-E box. What is the brand name on the box? Zinsco? Sylvania? Federal Pacific? Kearney Electric? If it is any of these, that panel needs to be replaced... NOW!

Otherwise, it may be possible to replace the bars.... and the offending breakers, of course.
 
I'd replace the box and have the whole system inspected again .
 
Without pictures its hard to say what brand the box is. If the service was upgraded in '91 it shouldn't be a Federal Pacific panel as they were fazed out a few years prior to that, but old stock could have been used. The Kearney/Zinsco/Sylvania are bad news as well and do/did have problems with corrosion. Have a licensed electrician look at it. If it's any of those brands, I'd replace it ASAP. They're all bad news. The sub panel idea will work and it perfectly safe as well as being much cheaper if the rest of the main box is ok. As for replacing the bus, it'll only save a small amount over replacing the whole panel as much of the labor is the same when paying someone to do it. Again, have someone qualified look at it. I've seen some really dangerous/crazy/unbelievable things that should have caused a fire.
 
It was an old i-t-e load center with an aluminum bus, sorry for the mistype

The electricians could have created a work around, but as there was signs of corrosion at a few other stabs I had them replace the entire thing with a new Siemens load center with a copper busbar

Added a surge protector as well at the service entrance

There goes the knife budget for a while!
 
Some ITE panels are under recall because of plating defects on the busses. Google that at see if your panel falls into that group because Siemens will pay for professional replacement.
 
Aluminum bus bars and really al wiring in residential applications was never a good idea. Most homeowners don't realize how incompatible copper and aluminum are when electricity is added. When done correctly, i.e. when Penatrox (or similar substance) is used and the connections are periodically checked such as an industrial or commercial location, the combination is safe. When used in a residential panel that may not be opened up for years or maybe decades, the combination of corrosion between and the difference in the expansion properties of the two metals leads to loose connections, corrosion, and arcing, all of which are bad. When a pipe leaks you end up with a wet house, when a wire 'leaks' you can end up with no house.
Most people also don't know that 20-30 years is about the service life of a lot of electrical services. While the vast majority last much longer, after that amount of time they should really be checked out to make sure everything is still safe. Glad it work out for you.
 
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