Latent Safety Defect
So I met with an electrician Saturday who's going to wire the upstairs and replace my circuit breaker panel. And he can do it fast and cheap! He wired Greg and Regina's house on 29th street. I'm so excited!!! Things are really moving along now.
Turns out my panel is made by Federal Pacific, a company that's hasn't made circuit breakers since 1986 because their stuff causes too many fires. Fortunately my insurance company doesn't know about it. They probably wouldn't cover my house.
They're not illegal tho, because of semantics. It's called a "latent safety defect." Apparently this is not a "hazard" because there has to be some other failure to cause an overloaded circuit and a fire. Is that like when people say that guns don't kill people, it's that crazy person behind the trigger? Guns aren't 'hazardous' per say, but sometimes the safety on a gun won't prevent you from shooting yourself or someone else. Isn't just operator error when you trip your circuit breakers? Is a faulty smoke detector responsible for fires that kill people?
http://inspect-ny.com/fpe/fpe.html
And here is some fluff from a former quality manager of Federal Pacific Electric Company that contradicts it: http://www.iaei.org/magazine/99_c/stablok.htm
All I know is I'd rather have circuit breakers that work 100% of the time.