How to Make Sure your Electric Panels are Working Properly

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Welcome back to our blog. Today we are here with our good friend Rob Jones from South Sound Home Inspections and we are excited to share with you a great Tacoma real estate tip.

We do a lot of business in north Tacoma, which has older homes, and some of these homes come with unique issues. We brought Rob in to talk about issues with electrical panels that we are seeing in homes that come up regularly in home inspections with homes built between 1950 and the early 1980's. There are 2 different types of panels we are having problems with, The Federal Pacific Electric Panel and the Zinsco panel, which could also could be identified as a Magnetrip or Sylvania panel.

One of the myths surrounding these panels is that they were recalled. While they were never actually recalled, they do pose a fire hazard. There are instances across the country of Federal Pacific Electric Panels causing fires because the breakers don't trip when they are intended to trip, and that creates an overload. With the Zinsco panels, breakers can become loose.

One way to identify a Federal Pacific Electric Panel is by identifying the letters "FPE" on the breaker. If it doesn't have that, look inside for the name "stab-lok" and also look to see if the breakers are orange-tipped. If you have one of these breakers, you need to replace them as they are a dangerous hazard to your home.

If you have any questions about these panels or anything about real estate in general, please give us a call. We want to make sure all of our buyers and sellers are well informed on topics that will be useful to them.