Oops, I misjudged the age. The panel is from the 80's per the seller.

First off, don't be flip about "easy" it is to make money. Service changes are decent money, but there is more to it than "a days work". Besides, you will NOT pay $3500 for just a panel change. Dare I say even in California. A whole service change maybe.
The average 200 amp service change is in the $1500-$2500 range in most areas. Service change, not just a panel change.

Well, you found one of very few places you will see advice to not "rush into" replacing an FPE panel.
This is the typical response to advice folks don't like hearing. "We never had a problem with it before"
Well, you certainly will know about it the first time something happens.
I will equate it to a hypothetical car that is known to have brake problems. Of course not all of them do, but many do.
"We never had a problem with the brakes before". But the first time the brakes fail you'll certainly remember it.

There are several things to consider here, but the important one is this:

It is not common to trip breakers in a residence. Some people live in a house for years and never have one trip. The most often noted failure of a FPE breaker is failure to trip.

Given the facts above it would be easy to assume the panel and breakers are fine - - quite simply because they've never been put in a situation where they need to trip. The evidence the breakers didn't trip only shows up after the fact, often as burned insulation and/or a burned up breaker.

The other common Federal issues are usually readily apparent.

Finally, things do wear out. People replace carpets and other floor coverings, appliances, furnaces and air conditioners, roofs, etc on an average of twice in 25 or so years, and remodel kitchens and bathrooms at least once during that period. Water heaters and plumbing get replaced. Why would you not think of replacing the electrical protection as well?

A few of the houses I've lived in had a Federal panel when I bought them. My family didn't spend a single night in the house till the Federal panel was gone.

"A few of the houses I've lived in had a Federal panel when I bought them. My family didn't spend a single night in the house till the Federal panel was gone."

Oh well. I am not as quick as you Bill. I had to wait three days until I could replace it. ;)

Oh well. I am not as quick as you Bill. I had to wait three days until I could replace it. ;)

I'll do (almost)anything to get out of painting.

"First off, don't be flip about "easy" it is to make money"

You are telling ME not to be flip about how easy it is to make money? Those that bothered to read my post will notice I took a contractor's quote about replacing these panels. Please go back and read.

Something to consider, Federal Pacific panels and breakers are no longer made. Several years ago there was a class action law suit against the manufacturer because of the many fires caused by this equipment. Very simply, if there is an overload for any reason, FP breakers won't trip. We are electricians in Dallas and we spent 3 days this week upgrading a customers service which involved replacing a FP main panel and 2 subpanels eliminating one of the subpanels. The entire kitchen including dishwasher, disposer, microwave, receptacles, undercounter and overhead lights and the dining room were on one 15 amp breaker. Took us a day to rewire these rooms and break them into 4 different 20 amp circuits. Bottom line, FP is inferior equipment and it is not if the equipment will fail it's when.

With the talk about these "won't trip".....were these things UL listed, and if so, how did they ever past muster? I thought that the UL listing requirements were extremely severe.

As a result of the law suit, Federal Pacific lost its UL listing. Maybe at one time the product was good enough to win UL approval. Then again, the FDA passed pet food that has caused the deaths of many dogs and cats.

I was seriously considering buying a house a few years ago that had(s) a FPE panel. The panel had most of the knockouts missing from someone playing musical breakers,moving them to different locations in the panel. I saw that and a few other things wrong with the house and changed my mind. If you end up purchasing this property have the price knocked down to pay for a breaker panel replacement.

I am OH so very sorry Cuddly.
I DID bother to read your post, and yes, I did mis-read it. I did not notice the closing quote all the way near the end.
The way it is written; with the even paragraph breaks, and nothing to highlight the quote; such as italics, I now see why I made such an egregious error.
My sincerest apologies to you and your family.

I guess folks these days do not recognize an honest mistake.
Now where is my little :rolleyes: emoticon?

Cuddlepoo,

When quoting there are a couple of ways to make sure people know what's quoted and what isn't.

One is to put all the quoted material in a different font, use italics, enclose it in a box, etc. This requires a bit of knowledge of basic html. (To make italics, put the text between a <i> and a </i>.)

Another is to use the literary convention in which every quoted paragraph begins with a quotation mark ("). If you are continuing the quotation in the next paragraph, you DO NOT put a quotation mark at the end, but you DO put one at the beginning of the next graf. The only closing quotation mark is the one on the last graf. As an example, here is how you could have written your quotation using this method (note, I'm shortening it quite a lot) :

"If a FPE panel has been in use for 25-30 years ... not just FPE panels.

"Inspectors most of the time recommend further evaluation by a licensed electrician ... even though the FPE panel in use has never failed?

"The above issues are points to consider before rushing into anything."

Hope this helps prevent confusion in the future.

In cuddlepoo's defense I thought his posting and quoting were very clear. Quote at the beginning, quote at the end, end of story.

coolvt: "With the talk about these "won't trip".....were these things UL listed, and if so, how did they ever past muster?"

I've heard the stories about the FPE panels before, but never really understood what it was about. This thread inspired me to do some Google research. The results have been very interesting...

In several hours of reading, it appears that the best-documented failure mode of the FPE panels is this: Some of the double-pole breakers, when presented with a fault on only one pole, will jam internally when they try to trip. The jam prevents the breaker from tripping, and once it occurs, the breaker will not trip under any circumstances. One test found that around half of the double-pole breakers they tested exhibited this failure mode. It only happens to double-pole types (and maybe to types with 3 or more poles, although I haven't found anyone who has tested same). It's also possible that a jammed breaker will remain closed on one or both poles even after the handle is moved to the "OFF" position. There doesn't appear to be any easy way to tell a good breaker apart from a bad one, other than subjecting it to an overcurrent (definitely not recommended for the DIY'er).

Another failure that is pretty well documented is that the bus bars and connectors on the breakers (they are push-in types) do not hold good contact over time. The connectors on the breakers lose tension; the contacts heat up, and the rather thin bus bars can melt or burn. Also, it appears that the bars themselves can shift and cause breakers to come loose. Apparently there are a lot of breakers that are only being held in by the panel cover.

There are a number of anecdotal reports of single-pole breakers that failed to trip under significant overload. However, unlike the case with the double-pole breakers, I haven't found any testing that has uncovered a mechanism by which this can occur. Oddly, in most of the reports I've found on the single-pole breakers, the culprits were 20A ones.

There is also mention in a few places that the panels did not offer enough space for wire routing, and that some practitioners bent incoming large-gauge feed wires excessively in order to make them reach the terminals, resulting in failures later when the over-stressed wires pulled loose. One site mentions that the panels did not meet the 1981 NEC spec for wire bending room, which is possible since the design predates 1981 by quite a few years (going back to the '60s apparently).

As for the question of the UL cert: about a year after Reliance Electric bought out FPE in 1980, they issued a press release acknowledging that FPE had engaged in fraudulent practices in obtaining at least some of their UL listings. There are different reports in exactly how this was done; at least two ex-FPE insiders claim that FPE had a rigged test setup for their UL-witnessed tests. Reliance ceased manufacture of FPE panels in 1981, but there was quite a bit of product in the distribution pipeline at the time which was not recalled. Also, a company in Canada which had rights to the design continued to manufacture them until some time in the 1990s.

This was a very well thought out post fa f3 20, especially about the panel cover holding in the breakers. When we were doing a service upgrade and replacement of FPE panels last week, when we took the panel cover off three of the breakers were loose and began to arc. By this time we had replaced the meter base and mast outside and the main panel in the garage. We shut off the main to pull out the sub and replace it. We used Cutler Hammer equipment throughout. As I began to pull the wiring from the FPE panel, virtually all the breakers came loose. Now, long story short, most folks go years without ever opening a service panel unless a breaker trips or they are adding something to a circuit. Soooo, there are a lot of FPE panels around that these folks have no idea there is any problem as long as there is not an over load.

Here is just about everything you might want to know about FPE breakers and panels.

Whether or not you choose to believe everything in the articles is up to you, but the issues of non triping breakers were brought to light by the owners of the company. Since there seems to be no information on just how long the rigged testing went on, all of them need to be viewed with suspicion.

Over the years I've seen almost all the issues described and have had to make many wiring repairs to damage caused by failure of both single and double pole breakers to trip.

Do not buy a house with FPE. Make the owners or better yet have your electrician change it out. If that last site didn't tell you enough about it nothing will. If you do leave it and it's a rental(god help you) I hope you can sleep.

As much as I agree about not keeping an FPE panel, how in the world is it a seller's responsibility to replace it if you are buying a house?????
WHY do folks think they can make a seller make all these changes that a buyer thinks must be done? What ever happened to buying a house and upgrading as you see fit...AFTER you buy it???

It's Buyer Market! If you want to sell at or near the asking price
you make the upgrades. Just a fact of life.

Regards
Chris

In the past week and a half we have upgraded two homes wired with FP panels. In both instances the home owner was paying for the upgrade.