Vent: Nearly fried myself on a 1960s panel swap last Wednesday

I was swapping out an old Federal Pacific breaker panel in a house built in 1963 over in Oak Park last week. The owner wanted a Square D upgrade before they sold the place. I pulled the meter, tested everything dead, and started yanking wires. But when I went to remove the main lugs, one of the bus bars still had juice from a backfeed from a nearby solar panel they didn't tell me about. My tester lit up and I about jumped out of my boots. Took me an extra 3 hours to track down all the hidden feeds and make sure nothing else was live. Cost me $150 in lost time on that job. Has anyone else dealt with sneaky backfeeds from old solar setups or am I just unlucky?

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2 Comments

wendysanchez2mo ago

Always kill the main breaker and check every potential feed point with a tick tracer before disconnecting anything.

5

tylerpark2mo ago

Used to skip tick tracing on older panels (figured they were simple enough) but stories like this make me second guess every time now.

2