While the company is out of business, the panels are incredibly dangerous and need to be changed immediately by a professional residential electrician. The breakers themselves will contain red tips as well. After mass reports of electrical fires starting from Federal Pacific breaker panel boxes, there was investigation performed throughout the 1980s that showed one in four of the Stab-Lok breakers were defective and could not trip to prevent electrical dangers.įederal Pacific Panel Boards with the fire issues will say Stab-Lok on the panel in between the breakers. Homes that were built between 19 commonly have a Federal Pacific circuit breaker panel with Stab-Lok breakers, as outlined in this excellent advice article from Angie’s List. You can learn more about this panel on US Inspect. Another defining feature of this panel are the bright colors the breakers contain, including pink, yellow, blue, green, and red. You can identify this panel because it is the only electrical service panel that has thin breakers instead of thicker, push, or round ones. As time passed, extreme fire and electrical shock dangers were discovered with this panel. This type of home electrical panel stopped being installed when there were design issues discovered, yet those that were already purchased at the time of the design issue continued to be installed. The Zinsco panel is a type of panel board that was installed in the 1970s and was incredibly popular. Zinsco or Zinsco-Sylvania Home Electrical Panel It is time to check your residential electrical panel to see if the characteristics match any of the following panels and call a residential electrician to perform a panel upgrade. There are many older home electrical panel brands that can no longer keep up with today’s electrical demands and are now outlawed due to the fire and safety hazard they present. As the circuit breaker panel ages and more high power appliances are created, older electrical breaker box brands become less effective at handling electric loads. It plays an important part of powering your lights and appliances and is the control panel board to keep your home safe from wiring and fire hazards. The home electrical panel is the heartbeat of your home’s power. Read on to learn how to find out if your home electrical panel is dangerous. Today we want talk more about keeping your house safe with electrical panels and breakers. We recently posted about some dangerous electrical wiring that we have seen in houses where we have helped restore fire damage.

General electric breaker panels