Federal Pacific Electric Breaker Box

A federal pacific electrical panel as well as other brands and derivatives of fpe breakers are supposed to function as follows.
Federal pacific electric breaker box. How to identify a federal pacific electrical service panel. Federal pacific electric panels are most common in homes built between 1950 and 1980. The breakers inside the panel are designed to guard your home against serious electrical problems by preventing circuit overload short circuits and outside power surges coming into. If your home was built between 1950 and 1990 and is equipped with a federal pacific electric fpe circuit breaker panel with stab lok circuit breakers you run a significant risk of breaker malfunction and fire.
What is a federal pacific electric breaker panel. Federal pacific electric will likely be written on the door of the breaker box. Federal pacific stab lok breaker panels are normally easy to recognize. A circuit gets overloaded this often happens when plugging in too many high powered devices and appliances into a low voltage circuit.
Inside look for the name stab loc the brand name of the circuit breakers. A federal pacific electric fpe circuit breaker panel can appear to be working properly for years. The main panel federal pacific sold was the stab lok named after its breaker functionality. The breakers would stab into slots in the bus bar and lock into place.
The most popular breaker panel installed was the federal pacific stab lok breaker. They are typically clearly labeled with the words federal pacific electric or fpe also when you open the door you will often see the words stab lok in the center or on the side of the breaker panel. Federal pacific new ubif thick 50 amp 1 in. The breaker box door usually says federal pacific electric or fpe once you open the door you will usually but not always see the words stab lok in the center or.
However although the panel had benefits issues began to emerge as some officials suspected that the panel was causing house fires.