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Electrical Wiring

Upgrade Electrical to 200 amp

8 years ago

We recently bought a 1926 home. Upon gutting the upstairs bathroom due to a leaking shower we discovered the entire second floor of our house is knob & tube wiring and on one circuit. We have decided to upgrade the service to 200 amp and rewire the entire second floor. We are going to have to do most of the work ourselves as we really don't have the option to pay an electrician to do all of the work and we can't live without that bathroom for much longer. When doing the upgrade should we install a new 200 amp panel with new service and use the existing 100 amp panel as a temporary sub panel? Will an inspector approve this temporarily? Is there some other way we should go about doing this? The existing 100 amp panel does not have any free circuits left and we can not find new breakers for it either.

Featured Answer

greg_2015

8 years ago

Why does it have to be a temporary sub panel? Just make it a permanent one. Even if you slowly move circuits over in the future, you don't need to call it temporary.

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Comments (6)

mtvhike
8 years ago
I did what greg more or less said for my 1891 home, in which the wiring had been upgraded from a 30 amp 120 volt panel (four screw fuses) to a 100 amp, 240 volt one (8 screw fuses), probably in the 1950s. I installed a new 200 amp panel and ran it off the old one. when I finally had all the circuits moved over, I had an electrician bring in new 200 amp service to the new panel and removed the old one. I never really needed more than 100 amps, because all my heating appliances (stove, hot water heater, boiler) are gas and I have no air conditioning.
Katie Walsh thanked mtvhike
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Bruce in Northern Virginia
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
If you have an electrician install a new 200 amp main panel, and make the existing panel a sub-panel, there should be no issues with your inspection. From there you can add circuits to the new panel, or move circuits over from the old at whatever pace suits you.

FYI - My house already had a Square D panel, and have found that the Square D QO panel (not the Homeline) is a good product and its easy to find breakers and other parts for them. I'm sure there are other good brands, but the Square D QO is widely supported. The 200 amp 30/40 version is very common, and allows for up to 40 circuits.

Bruce
petey_racer
8 years ago
If you can't afford it why not just run a new circuit to the bathroom and do the upstairs later?

You can use an old panel as a sub, but WHY bother??? You even said you can't find breakers for it, so it must be way old and outdated. And also, WHY would you need to, just do the upgrade. What is the reasoning for the "temporary" sub-panel? I don't get it.
petey_racer
8 years ago
"FYI - My house already had a Square D panel, and have found that the
Square D QO panel (not the Homeline) is a good product and its easy to
find breakers and other parts for them."

Homeline are perfectly fine and supported just as much as QO today. ANY modern name brand breaker/panel is FINE. Some people play up QO as vastly superior, but as a professional that does this every day I can tell you they are good, but not vastly superior.
Bruce in Northern Virginia
8 years ago
That was my quote, and I only wanted to make it clear that my comments were about the QO model panel I own, since there are different Square D models. There is nothing in my comment that says the Homeline panel is a bad product.

However, it is a different model line, and breakers and other parts are generally not interchangeable with the Square D QO line. In my case it was a simpler replacement because the electrician replaced an old 150 amp QO panel with a new 200 amp QO panel, and I could reuse the breakers.

Bruce

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