There's problems with breakers too. People can easily change a breaker. If they keep tripping the breaker, and don't investigate, eventually the breaker will either start n
Thank you very much for your video in 3.50mnts you taught me how bad the electricians that came into my home ..i never had issues with my fuse box and since the last electrician came and installed a new receptacle for my well water pump the fuse doesnt last 5mnts and each time we take showers we pay 8.50 blowing 2 fuses for 10mnts....lol so much for free water.. ...we are now waiting for another electrician to come from out of town.....but 1st im going to learn the skill so electrician stop charging me as a fool this feels as bad as when auto dealers want to make us pay $1200.00 for brakes and rotors
Using Type S adapters with the proper Type S fuses will prevent overfusing and also the ability to insert coins and such in the fuse sockets. This is a split bus panel. The 60 amp pull you just removed only serves the plug fuses. The rest of the pullout circuits still have power. The right hand pull, for the Range, holds two 40 or 50 amp fuses directly from the main terminals. The other two pullouts are 30 amps each for water heater and dryer, and those are coming also from the main terminals. This is either a 100 or 150 amp split bus panel with no Main fuses. Not having a main alone would be reason just there for replacement. Eight 120 volt plug fuse circuits isn't really enough for even a small home today. You might get by, but when you figure two kitchen counter circuits, bathroom circuit, washer circuit, dishwasher, disposer and all the lighting circuits and others circuits it's not much. Problem with most fuse panels is lack of room for expansion, even on a 100 and 150 amp panel You could probably add a subpanel to this using the subfeed tap lugs or one of the pullouts if it's unused, but I don't think you'd get a lot of circuits or capacity out of it.
Breakers have problems too. Easy for someone to switch to a larger capacity breaker. They have many moving parts, which makes them MUCH MORE unreliable than a properly sized fuse.. if a homeowner doesn't investigate the cause of the breaker tripping, and repeatedly resets the breaker, it can start nuisance tripping at a much lower amperage than it's rating. Worse, the worn parts can HANG, and NOT trip, in response to an overload, and cause a fire or damage equipment. The restriction bases prevented people from putting in over-rated fuses. But people are ignorant, and stuff in foil. So the government mandated inferior protection. - "fool proof". So people like me, in engineering for 39 years, have to pay the insurance company a premium to keep my superior protection.
Let's not forget the stabloc fiasco. I have one of those death-traps in my house right now because I literally can't afford what it will cost to take it out
@@Helladamnleet i have a federal pacific stablok panel as well, one time we had a space heater plugged in because our gas heat failed and the cord got slammed into the back door which was made of metal and it shorted out and the cord just melted until i manually turned off the breaker. i would much rather have a fuse panel than any breaker panel as i have seem issues with even high end ones.
@@WalterKnox Yep, I've had at least two times I went to replace an outlet to find melted wires behind it from the breakers not failing correctly. Supposedly they make retrofit breakers but I don't trust any part of the panel with or without new breakers
@@Helladamnleet i will say, after that happened i replaced all the breakers with connecticut electric breakers designed to replace stablok panels. and then tested them with the breaker tester that tests if it will trip under a dead short. and they all tripped, besides for the 240 volt circuits as i have no way to test them. but it was pretty simple, as far as fitment the new ones just popped right in perfectly. it still likely should be replaced but as far as breakers failing to trip, they seem to be okay now.
Sorry 7 month late. Your right, breakers can be replaced with larger amp ratings. However, it take quite a bit more time and effort, than to unscrew a 15 amp plug fuse then screw in a 30. Those adapters meant to correct that, also are not idiot proof, either, too small for a penny, no worries, what household DOESN'T have aluminum foil stashed away in their kitchen.
Wow. Must have been related to the previous owner of my house (sans the romex). I'm getting ready to upgrade my 60a service to at least 100a debating on 200a. In Cook Co. codes are strict on Romex (not allowed) and FMT (Greenfield) is limited to 6' as whips. The added fun is keeping the house running while I do this.
There are no 100 Amp fuses to fit that box. That pull out feeds the plug fuses only. To shut off all power all the pull outs have to be yanked. Or pull the meter. The tamper proof adapters will prevent the insertion of the wrong fuse but you could still bypass it with a coin, etc underneath it.
This is what known as a split bus fuse panel. Per code you were allowed up to 6 pull outs to disconnect all power to the house, aka the 6 throw rule. Some breaker panels before the 1980s were split bus as well, and no longer permitted as of 1981, but as long as single pole breakers were not added to the upper bus so as to require more than 6 hand movements to disconnect all the power, it still technically meets code under the grandfather clause.
@@Sparky-ww5reI have an aunt and uncle that has an old fuse panel with 6 pull outs and 16 plug fuses. It's a massive enclosure. I offered to change it out for a breaker panel but my uncle is partial to the old fuse box. It's a beautifully maintained Victorian that is mostly original. I was commenting on the fact that he said the 60 amp fuses needed to be swapped to 100 amp. 100 amp fuses are much bigger and will not fit in that pull out, nor would they be needed as the "MAIN" in an old fuse panel is a little misleading as it only protects the plug fuses and 60 amps is plenty. I've known people that yank the MAIN out, then get shocked or cause a short messing with something that is protected by one of the other pull outs. If I didn't know that you had to yank all of them to shut off all power, I'd probably had done the same. Most people would interpret MAIN as something that would interrupt all power.
@@topher8634thanks for sharing. That's definitely very large service for a fuse panel. Most fuses panels hold 4 or 6 plug fuses and the main & appliance pullout, typically for a range but I've also seen them used for an electric dryer when the home had a gas range. I've always called these smaller fuse panels a 2 x4 or 2 x6 panel respectively. These were 60 amp service, unless it was split bus requiring the appliance fuse block pulled to disconnect all power, the appliance block was typically rated 40 amp MAX, and you add that to the (misleading) 60A mains. By the time 100 amp services became the standard for most homes in the early 1960s, breaker panels became the new industry standard.
With this type of panel you need to pull all four pullouts out to kill the whole panel. Just removing the MAIN pullout will only kill power to the screw in fuses. The three other pullout blocks will still have power.
This is a split bus fuse panel and like a split bus breaker panel, there is no single main disconnect, you have to pull all the fuse blocks to shut off all power in the house. Per code you were allowed up to 6 pull outs or 6 circuit breakers to disconnect all power, these panels were prohibited in the 1981 NEC without a main disconnect upstream.
