How to Replace an Electrical Panel 

It's so nice to watch someone who knows the difference between a job done and a job well done and is proud of her work at the end.

I've been an electrician for 42 years and I am very impressed with this girl

Thank you so much. My panel is a hot mess and needs expansion and replacement. After watching this I'm confident I can do it myself in a day. I do have enough experience, and now have the confidence to tackle a big job like this.

I’m an apprentice. I was working with another electrician with more experience. We spent about 2 days correcting the panel schedule on a house we were roughing in. The panel needed to be changed so beforehand i asked “can you please label the wires before removing them?”. Long story short, he didn’t. And now that the house is nearing completion we now have to go through the process all over again. The mofo already quit and didn’t leave any comprehensive information about the wiring. I’m glad to see that I wasn’t crazy to ask about labeling the wiring beforehand.

Extending wires are the story of my life girl. Nothing like new work panels. It is what it is. Good for you I’m happy to see you love what you do 😊

Great job young lady, keep up this great work. You are a role model to all the young ladies out there. Love seeing young ladies like you doing this work. It shows young girls can kick butt in this field

A lot of great info. I will be replacing my panel soon, (I'm not connected to the grid) so this video is gold for me. Thanks for all the hard work, and educating us for basically free.

I love this. I just replaced my 200A sub panel in my own house, since during rebuild we needed to add GFCI and AFCI to all the new circuits. I'm an EE and usually do my own wiring. It all got inspected and passed with flying colors. Love seeing you handle the job and take pride in it

Love the video, very in depth very clean work I appreciate it immensely. I am learning the trade and learning how to do switches and how to work with the breaker panel and it’s all new and your video helped a lot!

I replaced a Zinsco panel installed in the 1960's where each ground came in through the romex connector with the hot and neutral as usual, but then was fed back up through the connector and wrapped around one of the cable clamp screws! I had seen that before with junction boxes wired in that era but never with the breaker panel. It was a total PITA to undo each one and pull the ground wires back down into the panel so they were ready to be connected to the ground bus in the new panel.

I decided to remove a main panel once while the service conductors were hot. I found out the insulation was so weak that the tool I was using to handle it pinched through into the conductor. It touched the chassis of the panel and the arc removed part of my tool. I'm hindsight, I should have checked no current on neutral and removed that and grounding first. Cost me a pair of pliers. Luckily I was using popper PPE, so I was not injured, just had to change my underwear. Nothing a little bleach can't fix. Stay safe and enjoy the profession Lexi!

Good technical service, a job well done and you alone my congratulations. You are a great electrician.

I'm electrician and instrumentation tech.. It's such nice to see you worked and explaination. 😊

Im a 22 yr old female thats looking into the trade so thank you for these videos!

Love that hoodie Lex 🧡 , awesome RU-vid as always ⚡️⚡️ you do such fantastic work keep up the great content

Excellent job and very professional!

👌🏽 Primo Job! 👍🏽 thanks for sharing your workload projects. Great tutorial simple explanations no nonsense just straight business. ⚡️ 🔌 keep plugging up the world. and Thanks Lexi 🤘🏽

I love the QO boxes changing my service out soon with a QO

You did such a incredible job as always

Great video. I enjoyed seeing the process.

First time viewer here. Excellent work you do. Well done. I learned that I'm not capable.

Really nice job, looks really neat

Great Video. Good Job and Nice Work. Thank you for sharing

Hi Lexi, thanks for this panel changeout video, Steve

You do nice work. Thanks for the video.

Enjoyed the Video 👍👍

Excellent work

Can anyone please explain to me why this is safe to have live feeders cut and operate like this? I thought the first thing to do is to shut off the power from the main feeders but do not look like lexi did it in the video, from what i can see at the beginning because she turned all them off so that tells me the main feeders are live. Is that ok to do this?

Very nicely done‼️

Very nice to See how you easy and perfectly make this Job and at the end finaly you clean it , that shows that you Like your job❤❤. Thanks for your Videos i Like them. Meik from Bavaria

Great job!

She said watch this I’m like I’m watching very carefully 😂😂😂

Thank you for the video I love it and learn a lot too

Excellent execution of an awkward job as per usual !. Lexi, you brought up a couple of interesting points as per what they allow in the USA and no I am not an electrician but have had work done by more than one journeyman and advice as per some do's and dont's allowed in Canada. In panel systems they do not allow the main service cables to pass through the branch circuit area of the box and they typically provide a divider plate with the panel to make sure the mains and main breaker are separate from the rest of the breaker panel. However at least they do allow for installing a panel upside down if advantageous so the mains breaker can be at the bottom of the panel if the service cable needs to enter the bottom. But that is not all, they also do NOT allow for splicing branch wires within the breaker panel and as you can well imagine how much fun that is to replace an existing panel when a wire that is too short cannot be allowed to be lengthened within the breaker panel. From my understanding they will allow a separate junction box outside of the breaker panel to be installed so that the said too short a branch circuit wire can be lengthened in an approved manor there and then ran into the breaker panel. It sounds insane ( this is in Alberta ) but that has been my understanding. I had the breaker panel in this farm house upgraded some years ago the electrician who did the work pointed out what had to be done to make it code compliant and the upside down panel method just made the existing branch circuits barely reach thankfully !.

you are a great inspiration

Te felicito por el trabajo que haces eres muy profecional en tu trabajo

Well done!

Good informative video🤟

Excellent!!❤

Nice work, good job..

I loved the shaking of the buss. Old panels need to be checked every few years for loose lugs and screws. Ask me how I know (no I didn’t have a fire luckily)

you got me! i subscribed your channel!

You got it going girl!!!

Have nothing but respect to you young lady. Too bad not to many young ladies have goals like you . Your father and mother must be proud of you.

Thank you!

It is really awesome that you learned a trade for money instead of learning to trade yourself for money.. to much of that crap. You are a great role model for a lot of young ladies.✌️

Tape is never overkill, always better to be safe than “oh sh**”

This lady is a boss

Awesome video! My home was rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy and the Electrician install a Homeline panel with only a single spare breaker. I want to add one of those Generator interlock kit to my panel and there is no room for it. I looked at Tandem breakers to make more space but all of the breakers are GFCI and ARC protection HOM115PCAFI and I don't think Homeline makes a Tandem breaker with GFCI and ARC. At this point I decided to change out my panel for the next larger size panel. The current panel is a HOMC30UC which has 30-Space 60-Circuit with a 40-Space 80panel. I noticed you pulled out the feeders while they are live and was wondering what you think of removing the meter on the outside beforehand so the feeders were not powered? Also you mentioned some of the grounds were pigtailed and you had to add additional length to them. Did you just add the length using a wire nut? Lastly when going for a permit is there anything special I need to add to the paperwork? Thanks again for the awesome video!

❤the video....didnt notice any meters being pulled ...that can save johnny homeowners life 😂

i watched your shorts and followed to your youtube. liked subed and rang the bell. cool vids

Sweetie I love your work

you're a beast i'm learning alot from you

Yes ❤ I got a hoodie like this the fluffy kind

Nice job Lexi

Perfeito, parabéns pelo trabalho.

Buen trabajo 👍🏽

Nice job.

Good job 🌹

Do you ever use a torque wrench for the final tightening of the panel breakers and lugs screws ?

Neat as can be!

Troll company for life lmao .....love it....got 95% of there lines keep up the awesome videos

There are two phrase I don’t use anymore 1) to be honest with you and 2 ) to tell you the truth. I would say that all the time then I had a customer tell me it sounds like there was an option of lying when you say it like that. He was right it didn’t sound good at all

Lineman pliers. The electrician's hammer.

Crazy, i went to a house recently and quickly learned why this challenger panels suck!! But i feel you on those wires, makes you wanna punch somebody, but there's nobody around! Hahaha

Nice work. I enjoy doing services but rarely get to do them in industrial maintenance, my company is cheap and doesnt want to upgrade anything

Hi Lexi, those Challenger panels really are sketchy, have you done any Zinsco or Federal Pacific Electric panels? Would love to see a changeout of those as well, by the way super clean panel turnout! 🔥

Greetings from a biomed to my fellow electrical brothers and sisters, keep rocking..

No mention of having the meter pulled by the power company? From what I saw you did this with the hots live?

Did you change that panel hot or did you pull the meter? Great video, you made that look so easy…

When you said you needed another 40 my mind went straight to beer 😅

I subbed. Great Channel. 1440p or 4K Uploads would be kinda cool though. 😎

This might be a silly question, but did you pull the meter to de-energize the mains? If so, does that require the power company to get involved? Or as an electrician, can you pull the meter yourself? You do great work! Keep it up!

@lexi abreu can you review the new milwaukee m18 brushless impact

@lexi abreu Were the service conductors energized when you were filming this? I assumed not, but then you flipped off breakers?

I have a question. When u were labeling the wires. We’re u labeling the size of the break associate with wire or the location of the breaker. I’m just curious thanks

Curious to know if this installation is to be inspected by the authority having jurisdiction. I see several code violations. I do enjoy the video and am impressed to see a young lady involved in the electrical trade. The nonmetalic sheathed wires above the panel cannot be exposed as they are. You would have to frame around them and the panel with 2x4 to get all of the wiring and equipment into a wall space instead of surface mounted. Not to be overly critical but there are reasons why we do things the way we do and also why the code is what it is.

Cool

Nice

Wonderful job how long it took you to do all that work ?

why not push in the extra slack from the romex coming in from the top into the panel? you would just need to strip a inch or two of cable.

If you have a challenger or westinghouse and you want to add more circuits you might as well just replace the entire panel as a cost saving measure.

As a non-electrician trying to just quickly swap out a receptacle or switch it's super frustrating to find a load center with no schedule. A second person and two cell phones do help.

This looks like too much work for me. This is why I am in college studying electrical engineering. Not nearly as labor-intensive. That gives me the opportunity to design electrical systems and not get my hands dirty installing them. However, I’m very impressed with this electricians level of knowledge. Working on my bachelors of science in electrical engineering and a minor in aerospace engineering

is it okay to keep those neutrals abovre the panel bundled like that even though youre only replacing the panel ?

Oooohhhshit, she's legit👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽💪🏾💪🏾💪🏾

What kind of camera do you use to record you while working?

Funny thing is eaton literally still sells this same bus, as the br line today.

How much does a job like this usually cost? Also, do you do any work in nj?

bro, i want to know if the loop thing that holds a lock breaks, do you have to replace the whole box or is there a solution to replace or fix the lock loop thingy?

Labeling a panel is def an add. This sometimes takes a few extra hours. Esp if you do it by yourself.

👍👍

so where the feeders hot the whole time?

Hey Lexi exactly what field of electrician do you do??

Is there a reason for no safety glasses? One of those wires I would think could come flying down or back up like at 4:17 and hit you in the eye

Was the service live?

Nice job BUT here we are not allowed to install the circuit conductors on top where the main breaker is and run them down to the separate breakers. Either install a junction box and connect all the wires with longer ones or install the panel upside down. I like the up side down method. Different countries have different rules.

I'd love to see you old work three phase into a shop.

2 Questions: How long does a panel replace job like this usually take an electrician? Also, if you replace a panel box like this, does code require that most circuit breakers need to be updated to AFCI/GFCI? (At 13:45, it looked like there might have only been a single AFCI/GFCI style breaker)

How are you able to get away with a panel change without upgrading to current afci & gfci requirements?