Stab-lok breaker question

[brad d]

Well I have 400amp service to my house and will be feeding two strings of 100amps to the new shop. (the house has two 200 amp panels)

But there is not a ton of room on the panles.. from what I have seen some of the brakers take up 2 spots some 4 spots and some big guys take up 8 spots... but the odd thing is I have a 50amp that takes up two spots and a 40 amp one that takes up 8....

So is there a difference?

in one panel I have enough room for the big 8 one but in the other I only have room for the kind that takes 4...

Can I get a 100 amp breaker in the 4 spots??

 

[brad d]

this is the fatty that takes up 8 spots

 

[Terry Kennedy]

Can I get a 100 amp breaker in the 4 spots??

The answer to any Stab-Lok question is "change the whole panel for another brand". If you go here there's a lot of info.

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes - a 20A Stab-Lok ignored a dead short, as did the 60A main breaker and a 125A floor breaker. The first breaker that tripped was a GE 400A feeder breaker (all the rest were FPE). About 40 of the breakers tested on that web site came from FPE panels I removed.

 

[tatra]

all the electricians i work with say the same thing..........basically you could weld with a stablok before it would trip.............on that note i have them in my house and garage and have never had a problem..........if i was buying new i would look at other options............and i have seen similar failures on the net of square d and siemens.........counterfits though of those brands........brad, my advice is do what i did and hire an electrician to teach you and buy the latest code book...........well worth the money...........i did both and never regretted it..................available down on main street from the permit/inspection guys............least thats where i got mine years ago..........

 

[BrianAltenhofel]

I still haven't gotten an FPE breaker to trip at my house. I'm pretty sure that a 120v MIG running full power (and still making great welds), 120v air compressor, deep freeze, refrigerator, microwave, 12 florescent lights, and stereo (that draws 3.4 amps constant according to an ammeter) is supposed to trip a 20 amp breaker.

Oh well, the wire's good enough for 40 going out there, but I'm about to upgrade to 100 thanks to someone's trailer house burning down (free 100amp loaded box and about 400 feet of wire, including 75 feet of 6/3 that wasn't hurt by fire or water damage). It *crossed* my mind to purchase a 100 amp breaker for the FPE box in our trailer, but the cost of that single breaker is the same as a whole new 200 amp box with most of the fixins' we need.

 

[Torque1st]

I have an older 1962 FPE 100A main breaker panel and there are no problems with it. I have tripped many breakers in it including the main when there was an unbalanced load. I have measured the current on all of the circuits and even attached a dummy load consisting of a rack of 100W light bulbs to help load individual circuits to test overload tripping. I have pulled all the breakers and checked all the connections. Everything checks out OK. Since it is an older panel it may have escaped many of the defects with later production. Even with that checkout it is being replaced when our service is upgraded to 200A. The panel is nearing 50 years of age and has earned retirement. I am replacing it with Siemens equipment.

 

[brad d]

I have tripped them in my house as well.. over loading it in the garage.... tread mill on the zeor arc or what ever they are... And a wire was not tight in the 25KW heater and it popped a 150amp one :O

 

[trainer]

I had them in my old shop and had them trip as well. I had an AC welder on a 20 amp 240 circuit. If i tried to crank the amps up too high then it would pop. Same thing with a 15 amp circuit that had a drill press and compressor. it would blow If i was using the drillpress and the compressor kicked on.

 

[Torque1st]

When my main tripped I started looking at the system and checking it out. The kids had every light in the house on as well as a bunch of other stuff. The way the panel breakers were arranged the load was incredibly unbalanced. The garage door opener was the final straw. When I was all done checking the breakers I rearranged them to balance the load for normal operation. I still have to make sure the electric oven is off and the electric kiln is off before I crank up my welder tho. For some odd reason the wife hates it when all the lights go off...

 

[Mr_fixit]

Stab loks don't like to trip. If you like the house, lose the stab-lok's. You can seel them and get your money back. The 100 Amp breakers for a stab lok would cost you a small fortune.

 

[metlmunchr]

We did the HVAC on a fairly large hospital addition in 1974. Trane furnished the star delta starter for the 450 ton centrifugal chiller, a Cutler Hammer IIRC. Every other motor in the building, pumps, exhaust fans, everything, was tied into a FPE motor control center supplied by the electrical contractor.

We did a lot of other work for the hospital over the years, both additions and smaller jobs. When we decided to get out of the contracting business around 2000, the maintenance director at the hospital told me they'd replaced the contacts in the chiller starter once at a cost of about $1200 for the parts and a couple hours labor. Over the same period of time, they were approaching $500K spent on keeping the FPE garbage in operation and running new pipe and wire to replace stuff with individual wall mounted combination starters as it became impossible to get parts for the FPE stuff.

No doubt in my mind the trash that outfit produced has cost homeowners, businesses, and property insurers $billions over the years.

 

[Norcal]

You do realize that this thread dates back to 2008? The only problems with FPE were with their StabLok panels their other gear did not have the same issues I still don’t care for them though.

 

[metlmunchr]

You do realize that this thread dates back to 2008? The only problems with FPE were with their StabLok panels their other gear did not have the same issues I still don’t care for them though.

That's sorta odd. 90% of the HVAC work we did was competitive bid plan and spec, with a large portion of it on public buildings where the state laws make it difficult to exclude a particular brand of equipment as unacceptable for use.

Typical practice in these contracts is that the HVAC contractor furnishes all starters, or combination starters as the case may be, for the equipment he furnishes, with installation and power wiring by the electrical contractor. Equipment to comply with specs listed within the electrical spec section.

By the late 70's, it became very common to refer to the electrical specs on a job and see statements such as " Starters as manufactured by Allen Bradley, Cutler Hammer, or approved equal. Starters by FPE are not acceptable and will not be approved" I find it odd that I've seen that language in more legally binding documents than I can count if FPE actually had no problems with anything but a particular breaker.

To be honest, I've never seen anything from FPE on any job other than the stuff on the hospital job I mentioned, and there was no FPE equipment in any other part of that hospital. Their problems weren't fire or safety related but rather related to mechanical failure rates multiple times higher than what they experienced with either A-B or Square D starters which made up the bulk of what was in the remainder of the facility. Common parts such as contactor blocks or overload relay blocks were available as long as you didn't mind waiting 4 to 6 months to get them. Same parts for A-B, Sq D, C-H, and Westinghouse available locally off the shelf or within a day or two at most. Could be the lack of reasonable parts availability times was the primary reason so many jobs specifically disallowed FPE equipment of any type.

All that said, if I owned a large plant or any other facility with lots of motorized equipment, I'd never allow the installation of a motor control center regardless of brand. Way too expensive up front, and locks you into expensive proprietary parts from a single source for the life of the installation.