# Variety of observations and questions replacing old panels



## joebanana (Dec 21, 2010)

The reason for rigid conduit is because of the building type, and rigid was more accessible at the time. (EMT came later) The reason for more heavy duty enclosures is progress, and greed. Are you guys just replacing the panels and leaving the old cloth covered wire? I hope not. Another consideration with those old schools is Asbestos. Not all of it has been abated. Especially in hard lids.


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## macmikeman (Jan 23, 2007)

Mellow said:


> As a second year apprentice and being quite a noob, I'd like to list some things that I've come across the past couple months that have interested me while replacing old 1950's-60's panels in some local public schools. Most of the panels are under the "Frank Adams" name, some "Square D", and some "Federal" panels too.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I remember in the early days of my career some of the inspectors demanded we run every conductor including neutrals long and looped back to the breakers or lugs (due to future electrician needing to move things daydream).
It explains a lot of the old panels being overstuffed with conductors so badly you cannot even see to the back wall of the enclosure.


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## Mellow (Jul 14, 2018)

joebanana said:


> Are you guys just replacing the panels and leaving the old cloth covered wire? I hope not. Another consideration with those old schools is Asbestos. Not all of it has been abated. Especially in hard lids.



Yes. Replacing the wiring wasn't part of the project- it wasn't part of what went out to bid. Hence my confusion about schools flying under the radar when it comes to this stuff. The old cloth wiring is only one of many things that is wrong with the electric in these schools, trust me. 


Yes there is major asbestos throughout all of the schools. They've abated a couple of the switch gears, but I'm sure there is asbestos literally everywhere. Once a room gets abated, you drill into the old concrete and there's probably more there. I don't know the right answer.


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## joebanana (Dec 21, 2010)

Mellow said:


> Yes. Replacing the wiring wasn't part of the project- it wasn't part of what went out to bid. Hence my confusion about schools flying under the radar when it comes to this stuff. The old cloth wiring is only one of many things that is wrong with the electric in these schools, trust me.
> 
> 
> Yes there is major asbestos throughout all of the schools. They've abated a couple of the switch gears, but I'm sure there is asbestos literally everywhere. Once a room gets abated, you drill into the old concrete and there's probably more there. I don't know the right answer.


I believe you about the wiring all FUBAR, seen it for myself. It's hard to believe they replace the panels and leave that old brittle, flaky wire., but I've seen that too. The last school I did had an "on-site" inspector. Pretty cool dude, but he was so bored, he'd follow us around most of the day just for someone to talk to.


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## CoolWill (Jan 5, 2019)

A lot of the overkill you see was due to the Soviet scare.


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## stiffneck (Nov 8, 2015)

If it's a "public school" that makes it a "government owned property" school. Thus may explain the later "hog wiring" that took place. The best place to see "hog wiring" is where the cit-ay, count-ay, or state office is that the Inspectors work out of. Saint Louis cit-ay hall, municipal court, civil court and city-1 jail was once laughable back in the 1990's. If these buildings where privately owned, those same inspectors would shut them down and pull the hook.


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## Mellow (Jul 14, 2018)

stiffneck said:


> If it's a "public school" that makes it a "government owned property" school. Thus may explain the later "hog wiring" that took place. The best place to see "hog wiring" is where the cit-ay, count-ay, or state office is that the Inspectors work out of. Saint Louis cit-ay hall, municipal court, civil court and city-1 jail was once laughable back in the 1990's. If these buildings where privately owned, those same inspectors would shut them down and pull the hook.



They are indeed, public schools. But that's such BS-- if the latest NFPA code should be in full force anywhere- it should be at these public elementary/middle schools, and instead it's the opposite. Those silly Tamper resistant receptacles would actually be perfect in these schools. Instead, half the outlets are broken/ancient. Years and years of violations all over the place. Like I said, double and triple tapped stuff all over the place...melted breakers, ancient wiring.... The state grants millions of dollars in capital improvements and half of it goes to putting lipstick on the pigs (i.e. they're installing gender neutral bathrooms.... complete with flushometers).


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## HertzHound (Jan 22, 2019)

> 1. The weight/thickness of the metals in comparison to the replacements.
> 
> The old steel back boxes of the panels and panel covers are crazy thick and heavy. The aluminum replacements are cheap and flimsy in comparison, most of them arriving bent and scratched on arrival. The old rigid conduit alone was insanely overbuilt. I wonder what the logic was? Was it to contain a fire better- or just made to last because that's how things were made in good ol' USA back then? The guys who installed this stuff must've been strong as hell.


During the OPEC oil embargo, they came up with a way to make synthetic plastics using very little oil. The BPA caused men’s testosterone to decrease and estrogen to increase. They no longer could bend heavy wall conduit, let alone lift panel boxes or stuff wires into panels. So they came out with Thin wall conduit and reduced the amount of steel and copper in most items. 

As family sizes decreased the need for greater immigration became apparent. Soon we will become a nation similar to the movie Wall-E. We will be so weak that we will need robots to do everything for us.


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## Mellow (Jul 14, 2018)

HertzHound said:


> During the OPEC oil embargo, they came up with a way to make synthetic plastics using very little oil. The BPA caused men’s testosterone to decrease and estrogen to increase. They no longer could bend heavy wall conduit, let alone lift panel boxes or stuff wires into panels. So they came out with Thin wall conduit and reduced the amount of steel and copper in most items.
> 
> As family sizes decreased the need for greater immigration became apparent. Soon we will become a nation similar to the movie Wall-E. We will be so weak that we will need robots to do everything for us.



I'm not sure if your post is tongue in cheek, but there seems to be a lot of truth in what you are saying. Honestly, one of my biggest problems with the work that we do is the daily handling of a variety of plastics. Especially the malleable plastics such as the vinyl on THHN or black tape-- plasticizers and phthalates are used, which the body recognizes as endocrine disruptors and are found to mimic estrogen. People say "well you don't eat the stuff"- worse, your skin absorbs it.


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## HertzHound (Jan 22, 2019)

Mellow said:


> I'm not sure if your post is tongue in cheek, but there seems to be a lot of truth in what you are saying. Honestly, one of my biggest problems with the work that we do is the daily handling of a variety of plastics. Especially the malleable plastics such as the vinyl on THHN or black tape-- plasticizers and phthalates are used, which the body recognizes as endocrine disruptors and are found to mimic estrogen. People say "well you don't eat the stuff"- worse, your skin absorbs it.


I think most of us are one “no lube” wire pull away from using gender neutral bathrooms. :vs_laugh:


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## dmxtothemax (Jun 15, 2010)

The origin of heavy thick metal coduit,
goes back to the first days of reticulated electrical systems.
The days of D C !. When power first went out, their were no electricians at the start ,so wiring was installed into buildings by our mortal enemys the plumbers. Which was probably because they had the experience and tools to work with metal pipes.


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## splatz (May 23, 2015)

CoolWill said:


> A lot of the overkill you see was due to the Soviet scare.


That's true, most of the older schools around here still have these: 

https://imgs.6sqft.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/28094832/NYC-fallout-shelter.jpg 

I would not be surprised if there was a spec for RMC that stuck around it copied and pasted specs for DECADES after that requirement was history.


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## splatz (May 23, 2015)

I think the quality of these things are like most things, they gradually shaved quality at every opportunity to save a few nickels.


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## JRaef (Mar 23, 2009)

Another way to look at this is that in the "old days", materials were cheap and engineering was expensive. So if you don't want to spend a ton of your product development budget on up-front engineering, you just throw more materials at a problem. _"I don't know EXACTLY how thick a busbar needs to be to safely carry 200A, but if I make it twice as thick as the other guy, it will be fine."_ 



But over time more and more competition arose while materials became more expensive. By the 1970s we had been cranking engineers out of colleges by the butt load, resulting in engineering becoming cheaper (by comparison). So mfrs had them re-engineer products to be "right sized" rather than over sized. When I first became an EE in the early 80s, some of the early work I was given was just that sort of thing. For example studying heat rise tests on bus bars in MCCs so that we could minimize the amount of copper wasted; working with an ME on redesigning enclosures to use 16ga steel instead of 14ga, but using extra folds and creases to attain the same rigidity; coming up with a fastening system (nut inserts) so that back panels didn't have to be 11ga steel in order to have enough threads to hold onto equipment during fault stresses. So yes, compared to the products we were replacing, the new stuff was "less than", but in reality some of that old stuff was overkill.


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## 460 Delta (May 9, 2018)

JRaef said:


> Another way to look at this is that in the "old days", materials were cheap and engineering was expensive. So if you don't want to spend a ton of your product development budget on up-front engineering, you just throw more materials at a problem. _"I don't know EXACTLY how thick a busbar needs to be to safely carry 200A, but if I make it twice as thick as the other guy, it will be fine."_
> 
> 
> 
> But over time more and more competition arose while materials became more expensive. By the 1970s we had been cranking engineers out of colleges by the butt load, resulting in engineering becoming cheaper (by comparison). So mfrs had them re-engineer products to be "right sized" rather than over sized. When I first became an EE in the early 80s, some of the early work I was given was just that sort of thing. For example studying heat rise tests on bus bars in MCCs so that we could minimize the amount of copper wasted; working with an ME on redesigning enclosures to use 16ga steel instead of 14ga, but using extra folds and creases to attain the same rigidity; coming up with a fastening system (nut inserts) so that back panels didn't have to be 11ga steel in order to have enough threads to hold onto equipment during fault stresses. So yes, compared to the products we were replacing, the new stuff was "less than", but in reality some of that old stuff was overkill.


When I read this I was reminded of a statement an engineer made to me once, "Anyone can build a house, but it takes an engineer to build one that can barely stand".


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## splatz (May 23, 2015)

JRaef said:


> But over time more and more competition arose while materials became more expensive. By the 1970s we had been cranking engineers out of colleges by the butt load, resulting in engineering becoming cheaper (by comparison). So mfrs had them re-engineer products to be "right sized" rather than over sized.


Another post I clicked like for but I didn't like. To me this is the saddest thing in the world, a generation of engineering talent dedicated to shaving nickels and dimes. Imagine what might have come of this if they set them to innovation and improvement rather than turning a dollar of profit into $1.02.


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## telsa (May 22, 2015)

460 Delta said:


> When I read this I was reminded of a statement an engineer made to me once, "Anyone can build a house, but it takes an engineer to build one that can barely stand".


You're thinking of the Blues Mobile. It barely made it to Daley Plaza. Yeah, it's on film. :vs_laugh:


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## telsa (May 22, 2015)

splatz said:


> Another post I clicked like for but I didn't like. To me this is the saddest thing in the world, a generation of engineers trained on shaving nickels and dimes. Imagine what might have come of this if they set them to innovation and improvement rather than turning a dollar of profit into $1.02.


Lack of TARIFFS drove all of this.

The NEMA players were looking over their shoulder to what was happening to Detroit. :crying:


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## 460 Delta (May 9, 2018)

telsa said:


> You're thinking of the Blues Mobile. It barely made it to Daley Plaza. Yeah, it's on film. :vs_laugh:


No, I'm thinking of an actual guy who made this statement which is about engineering to a minimum spec.
Or he may be a relative of the guy who hands out the loose leaf local amendments.


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## varmit (Apr 19, 2009)

I started in the trade many years ago. Until somewhere around the late 70s or early 80s, most jobs/ employers were stingy with material and wasteful with labor. Now days general use materials are considered cheap and labor is controlled more closely.


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## JRaef (Mar 23, 2009)

I know I’m probably hacking this hackneyed saying, but here goes:

Most people see a glass half full as missing half of its potential, an engineer sees a glass that was designed twice as big as it needed to be...


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## Powrtoch (Jan 20, 2020)

Was just about to post a picture of an old frank adams panel i got here at the hospital. Wtf? Still cranking out the electrons tho. After 20 posts i will. How do you turn the breakers off? Looks like a drawer you pull out. Crazy. They also have circuit 123456 ect down the left side. Not 13579. 

I built a few public schools the past 10 years and they passed the ceiling with tons of open j boxes and waaaay more to be done. Somebody paid somebody my guess.


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## macmikeman (Jan 23, 2007)

HertzHound said:


> During the OPEC oil embargo, they came up with a way to make synthetic plastics using very little oil. The BPA caused men’s testosterone to decrease and estrogen to increase. They no longer could bend heavy wall conduit, let alone lift panel boxes or stuff wires into panels. So they came out with Thin wall conduit and reduced the amount of steel and copper in most items.
> 
> As family sizes decreased the need for greater immigration became apparent. Soon we will become a nation similar to the movie Wall-E. We will be so weak that we will need robots to do everything for us.




Hertz, we know you were fooling around here, but for the sake of the children on the website: EMT was around for a heck of a lot longer than the oil embargo happened:73/74. How long before I don't really know, but I have seen benders in my time that looked like they were made around WW2 time.


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## macmikeman (Jan 23, 2007)

Just checked. EMT= 1920's.


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## catsparky1 (Sep 24, 2013)

We are working a city block of buildings built in 1886 . We are doing the power upgrades . One building still has the gas lamp lights still working . The ones they pulled wire thru when electricity started to become the thing . The last panel installed was 1972 . The oldest I have found is 1931 . Discos you can sleep in . 1000 mcm cloth wrap wire for a 400 amp MDP . 

They young strong kid we have as a helper drools as we toss this stuff on the ground . He is a scrapper and other than my pic of the litter he gets to scrap it all . Those copper busses are money .


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## telsa (May 22, 2015)

macmikeman said:


> Just checked. EMT= 1920's.


IIRC, Republic Steel invented the spec. and was for a time its sole source.

It ONLY took off after Benfield invented the ONE-SHOT hand bender.

IIRC Benfield was a Republic Steel travelling salesmen and he was getting tremendous resistance because a hickey -- the hand bender everyone knew -- would kink EMT all day long. 

Hauling around a Chicago bender is totally impractical for the crew.

The contractors loved the price,... bending in the field was the issue.

In the Great Depression, EMT started to really take off. 

It was priced so much less... and was easier to tote. :smile:


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## JRaef (Mar 23, 2009)

On top of that, prior to 1920, most electrical enclosures were made of cast iron, not sheet metal. So it was very time consuming to run a conduit into a box like a disconnect switch or motor controller, but it wasn't the conduit that was the issue, it was the box itself. The Detroit Fuse & Manufacturing Company were one of the first to create a switch in a _sheet metal_ box for the Automotive mfrs., partly in order to facilitate faster changes to production lines. Then EMT followed shortly thereafter because now the rigid conduit was more time consuming than making the box connections. 

Side note: that company making the sheet metal switches used a logo stamped into their boxes with a "D" for Detroit inside of a square box and eventually they changed the name of the company to what everyone was calling them anyway, "the company that makes those square D switches", or as we know them now, Square D. (I worked for Square D back before they were bought out by the French and you learned that story on day one of your orientation. I always thought that was a cool story).


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## ComputerGuy (Apr 13, 2020)

catsparky1 said:


> We are working a city block of buildings built in 1886 . We are doing the power upgrades . One building still has the gas lamp lights still working . The ones they pulled wire thru when electricity started to become the thing . The last panel installed was 1972 . The oldest I have found is 1931 . Discos you can sleep in . 1000 mcm cloth wrap wire for a 400 amp MDP .
> 
> They young strong kid we have as a helper drools as we toss this stuff on the ground . He is a scrapper and other than my pic of the litter he gets to scrap it all . Those copper busses are money .



I would love to see some pictures of the equipment in these older buildings. I am also a young kid, but unlike your helper I love to collect older panels and wiring devices and preserve history. I would be interested in such equipment for my collection. Please let me know what you have.


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## Mellow (Jul 14, 2018)

Added photos of some of the remnants here: 



https://imgur.com/a/7dX6odK




I wish I had more pictures of the crazy wiring we found! Last picture has some of the craziest wiring. One of the breakers on a panel was completely melted in two. This was in a public school, mind you. Luckily we replaced the panels, about 70 in total, including a main switch gear (no pictures of that unfortunately).


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## ComputerGuy (Apr 13, 2020)

Wow that is incredible. I have only seen fuse pullouts with 3 poles in an old square D catalog. I thought they were mostly used in light commercial and residential installation. I hope this stuff isn’t all getting scrapped. My personal favourites are the square D NQB lighting/appliance panel (I really want one for my collection), the frank adam panel with the pullout cartridge fuses and the westinghouse power panel. FYI, you can get some good money for many of the older breakers if they are in working condition, especially the ones from that big heavy westinghouse power distribution panel.


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## ComputerGuy (Apr 13, 2020)

Since we are talking about old panels, I thought it would be appropriate to post a timeline of when square D introduced different lines of breaker panels and circuit breakers. This might be helpful when trying to date older panelboards or find replacement breakers. Unfortunately, my timeline only covers low voltage (mostly 120/208/240V) panels. If anyone thinks my timeline has any errors or has more information I can add to complete it please let me know. I will be adding fusible panels in the mix when I have time and when I have more information I will be building a timeline that covers ITE and GE as well.


<a href="https://imgur.com/bxbXx0I"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/bxbXx0I.png" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="https://imgur.com/UAzmquS"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/UAzmquS.png" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="https://imgur.com/8ysFu7I"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/8ysFu7I.png" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>


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## Norcal (Mar 22, 2007)

ComputerGuy said:


> Wow that is incredible. I have only seen fuse pullouts with 3 poles in an old square D catalog. I thought they were mostly used in light commercial and residential installation. I hope this stuff isn’t all getting scrapped. My personal favourites are the square D NQB lighting/appliance panel (I really want one for my collection), the frank adam panel with the pullout cartridge fuses and the westinghouse power panel. FYI, you can get some good money for many of the older breakers if they are in working condition, especially the ones from that big heavy westinghouse power distribution panel.





A closed grocery store had a 3Ø Zinsco panel with hinged 3 pole pullouts, in the room the compressor racks were in it dated back to the 1950's. The single phase panels had plated copper bus that was typical of that time, unlike the later ones with AL bus that made their lousy reputation.


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## Mellow (Jul 14, 2018)

ComputerGuy said:


> Wow that is incredible. I have only seen fuse pullouts with 3 poles in an old square D catalog. I thought they were mostly used in light commercial and residential installation. I hope this stuff isn’t all getting scrapped. My personal favourites are the square D NQB lighting/appliance panel (I really want one for my collection), the frank adam panel with the pullout cartridge fuses and the westinghouse power panel. FYI, you can get some good money for many of the older breakers if they are in working condition, especially the ones from that big heavy westinghouse power distribution panel.



Glad someone appreciates them! Yeah, I had to scrap them. Had no idea anyone collects these things. Still have all the breakers. Not sure where to sell them, though...


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