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🎙️ Is My Electrical Panel Up To Code and Safe? Signs Every Homeowner Should Know. · Lipps Electric Podcast

• 0:01
  Check A Pro Joe here on check a pro radio, kevin lipps is joining me from lipps
• 0:06
  electric how you doing kevin hello jim i'm doing really good man thanks for
• 0:11
  asking yeah so great to have you here as the expert in electrical on the check a
• 0:17
  pro radio show a question's come into the program,
• 0:21
  and i know you have an answer to it as you always do is my electrical panel
• 0:26
  up to code this is a common question that your customers do ask you as well,
• 0:33
  What is the answer to the question? That's a great question.
• 0:37
  And many homeowners are unaware that their electrical panels,
• 0:41
  especially older ones like Federal Pacific's a big one around here,
• 0:45
  they may no longer meet modern safety requirements.
• 0:49
  And as a trusted electrician, service provider, we're here to break it down for you.
• 0:56
  Yeah. So the best thing to do is have people contact your office.
• 1:00
  You guys will come out, trained technician,
• 1:04
  insured, licensed You'll look at the panel.
• 1:09
  And instantly, I'm sure One of your technicians can say Oh yeah,
• 1:14
  we know exactly how old this is, give or take We know if it's a concern or not
• 1:19
  And if it needs to be swapped out It's something you guys can do Yes,
• 1:23
  and I'll keep repeating this forever That the electrical system is the most
• 1:27
  neglected system in a home,
• 1:29
  So in specific to the panels, if your home was built before 1990 and it still
• 1:35
  has its original panel, and you can tell when you look at them,
• 1:38
  but it's definitely time to schedule a licensed electrician to inspect it.
• 1:42
  Look for labels like Federal Pacific. Also can be called stab lock.
• 1:46
  Those are definitely red flags.
• 1:48
  Also look for damaged wiring or rusted meter bases and panels.
• 1:53
  So there's two parts to the service to a home. You have the outside,
• 1:56
  the exterior portion that connects to the utility.
• 1:59
  A lot of these homes from the 1990s earlier have overhead services,
• 2:04
  so you can see the utility line connect to your home.
• 2:06
  Where it connects to the home, it's your responsibility.
• 2:09
  And that wire coming down, it's a gray solid piece of wire with gray plastic.
• 2:15
  That can, over time, come apart and fall apart, especially with heavy sun exposure.
• 2:20
  So if you see any of that, rust is always bad.
• 2:24
  You should definitely call an electrician.
• 2:27
  So our local electric company is responsible for what comes to the overhead.
• 2:33
  And then when it starts coming down that gray pipe or line, that's what you
• 2:39
  guys can help our listeners with.
• 2:42
  Correct. Yeah. So it's a good call out because it is where is the utility responsible,
• 2:47
  where is the homeowner responsible.
• 2:49
  And it is that connection point at the roof. Mm-hmm.
• 2:54
  I'm sure on a regular basis, you guys take a look at that as well as the panel.
• 3:01
  It's all very important, right? The utility company brings it to our homes,
• 3:05
  but like the plumbing in our home,
• 3:09
  like the appliances in our home, it's our responsibility as homeowners to have
• 3:14
  it maintained and or replaced.
• 3:16
  So let's get back to the panel again.
• 3:19
  The panel is very important. A lot of people may not even know where their panel is. Would you agree?
• 3:25
  Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's definitely true.
• 3:28
  And would you recommend that they locate their panel and become a little educated?
• 3:33
  They can open up the door on the panel, which is safe at that point.
• 3:36
  I will say this, do not unscrew anything to get into your panel.
• 3:41
  That's too far. So it should just clip open, if you will, and clip shut, you know, most of them.
• 3:47
  And they're going to see these switches, which are breakers,
• 3:50
  correct? That's correct. Yes.
• 3:53
  And those breakers are an essential part of the panel.
• 3:57
  The panel itself doesn't really move, but the breaker does move.
• 4:00
  Can you explain a little bit how the breaker works?
• 4:03
  Yes, yes. And code has shifted to what breakers are required.
• 4:06
  So another call-out is really anything built before the 2000s or early 2000s
• 4:11
  have old standard breakers that don't meet today's code that also provide additional
• 4:16
  protection of GFCI protection and arc fault protection.
• 4:20
  But basically, it's a switch. Each one of those breakers is a switch,
• 4:24
  and the special part of them for what they do and how they operate is they can
• 4:31
  sense what's happening on the wire that runs through the home to the outlets,
• 4:34
  to the switches, to the lights, to the appliances.
• 4:37
  It feels or it senses the amount of power, and when it hits the threshold,
• 4:42
  it will shut off right away. And that threshold means there's a threat.
• 4:46
  There's a problem. It could be arcing.
• 4:49
  It could be the ground wires touching the hot, or it could be a faulty appliance.
• 4:55
  Some of the appliance went bad.
• 4:56
  So the point of it is safety. That's the whole point of what breakers do. Sure.
• 5:02
  And, you know, generally a breaker will break when there's too much pulling on it. There's a draw.
• 5:09
  So those wires that are in your wall going to your outlet are a certain size.
• 5:15
  So if you plug in an appliance, especially one that has an element or a big motor.
• 5:22
  Like a circular saw, you plug that into a lamp outlet, it's possible it could
• 5:28
  break the breaker, switch the breaker off because the breaker is saying,
• 5:32
  wait a second, this isn't designed for it.
• 5:35
  The wiring in the wall isn't designed for it. And you've reached the maximum
• 5:39
  of draw and we're going to knock it off.
• 5:42
  That sounds about right, correct? That's spot on. And another thing people don't
• 5:46
  think about a lot is when the breakers trip, it's part of its life has been used.
• 5:53
  If it trips again, a little bit more of its life has been used.
• 5:57
  So as it trips, it will likely trip more in the future.
• 6:02
  So if you have a consistent thing breaker tripping, it's worth having it looked at.
• 6:08
  It most likely is like a hairdryer in the bathroom or, or a lot of times when
• 6:13
  people are running around with their vacuum cleaner and plug into a different
• 6:15
  outlet than they usually do, that can trip things too.
• 6:19
  But anything, like you said, element, heat, heat is the biggest.
• 6:22
  And it's like when winter comes along and you're putting those little heaters
• 6:26
  and those space heaters in different rooms, that's when the winter gets a little bit higher risk.
• 6:32
  Yeah. Um, we had a house where in the kitchen we had the microwave and the toaster
• 6:39
  oven plugged into the same outlet.
• 6:41
  We couldn't run them both at the same time. Yes. Too much.
• 6:46
  So we, we had a rule. You can toast.
• 6:50
  And we don't want to get into that because possibly we probably shouldn't have
• 6:54
  been plugging it into that.
• 6:55
  Who knows? I mean, I don't even know what that was rated for,
• 6:58
  but that's a good example.
• 7:00
  If it keeps tripping, it's a problem. And I have heard what you said.
• 7:06
  The more it trips and resets, the less and less life that breaker has.
• 7:13
  And you shouldn't be using it as a switch. You shouldn't have to switch it back all the time.
• 7:18
  If it's constantly switching off, then you need to call Lips out.
• 7:23
  All of Kevin's information is located in the description of this video podcast.
• 7:30
  Feel free to reach out to Kevin and his team and they will help you out with everything.
• 7:34
  Once again, buddy, thank you so much for joining me, Kevin. Great.
• 7:37
  Thanks, Jim. Appreciate you.