That's an old box nothing like anything I've ever seen. Given the rating I'm not sure it's actually older than what I'm thinking of, maybe it's just a style not common around here. Many of the principles of operation are the same though. It looks old, but the paint spatter may be contributing significantly to that.
As you probably both know, but wasn't mentioned, it's completely normal to have the main breaker "over committed", that is, have branch breakers adding up to more than the main.
The way I think of it, it's really easy to disable the feed -- just pull the meter. What's hard is getting it turned back on; this will inevitably come to the attention of the utility, and they don't want you doing that. :-)
There may be too much wire for the space, but "best practice" is to run the branch wires to the bottom, then back up to whatever breaker they go to. Yes, that's extra wire and takes up space, but if you do it that way you can always attach the existing wiring to any breaker in the box. I would guess it wasn't designed with that many half-height breakers installed (I've got a lot too, and would like to upgrade, but not enough to pay the cost any time soon).
I haven't replaced a main breaker live, but I would. I've done "tie-ins" for film location shooting, and that's worse -- attaching two vice-grips that have special cables welded to them to the main bus-bars, to power your own complete power distribution system (some of the lights exceed 20 amps draw, may exceed 15).
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2016-06-12 04:35 am (UTC)That's an old box nothing like anything I've ever seen. Given the rating I'm not sure it's actually older than what I'm thinking of, maybe it's just a style not common around here. Many of the principles of operation are the same though. It looks old, but the paint spatter may be contributing significantly to that.
As you probably both know, but wasn't mentioned, it's completely normal to have the main breaker "over committed", that is, have branch breakers adding up to more than the main.
The way I think of it, it's really easy to disable the feed -- just pull the meter. What's hard is getting it turned back on; this will inevitably come to the attention of the utility, and they don't want you doing that. :-)
There may be too much wire for the space, but "best practice" is to run the branch wires to the bottom, then back up to whatever breaker they go to. Yes, that's extra wire and takes up space, but if you do it that way you can always attach the existing wiring to any breaker in the box. I would guess it wasn't designed with that many half-height breakers installed (I've got a lot too, and would like to upgrade, but not enough to pay the cost any time soon).
I haven't replaced a main breaker live, but I would. I've done "tie-ins" for film location shooting, and that's worse -- attaching two vice-grips that have special cables welded to them to the main bus-bars, to power your own complete power distribution system (some of the lights exceed 20 amps draw, may exceed 15).