Looks like my all electric house is starting to take its toll on our main panel.    It’s one of those, I would do the work, but the law says it has to be a licensed/bonded electrician to service/replace the panel.   This would be in the North Fort Worth area.

TL;DR:  North Fort Worth guy looking for good Electrician to do a full 225A panel replacement without asking for both an arm and a leg in payment.

In for info

" the law " ?   Who have you asked in your local government?

An electrical panel can be replaced by a home-owner.  A permit to replace it is obtained prior to the work by the local building inspector/code enforcement office and an inspection by the local building inspector confirms it replaced according to all current electrical codes.

Thats the law.  Is someone telling you something else ? Maybe a local jurisdiction is telling you something else?  I'd want to 'see the law' they have passed that dictates that a home owner can't do the work themselves, or hire who-ever they want.  Work on your OWN-HOME can be done by anyone you want it done by.  The key is, it needs to be done correctly, per electrical standards.  Even if you do it yourself.

Edit:   Just looking for a referral, not "what you should do".

My friend Dustin owns this company up your direction:  https://extremeelectrictx.com/



If you don’t get anywhere with them I can help maybe.  We mostly stick to the Commercial/Industrial/Oilfield though.
Www.2K-electric.com




The biggest pita on it will probably be the permit/inspection  if required because you can eat up a lot of time waiting on an inspector even with an appointment.

Thanks @kells81.
We may not need to do anything, but I like to plan for big expenses before they become emergency spending.  

My old house in Dallas had a Federal Pacific panel in my daughter's closet. My (ex) wife inherited some money and bought a hot tub (which is like boat $$$, except the water is on the inside). Turns out it needed a double pole 60 amp breaker and I had already run a sub panel into the garage for my welder and power tools.

So we called an electrician about possibly upgrading and moving the panel. He never came out to look, but the phone conversation went something like, you have old wiring, undersized and no grounds, you'll need GFCI/AFCI and well have to rewire your whole house, you'll be without power for two weeks, etc. etc. $16k in 2005 dollars.

I'm not saying do it yourself, just be prepared.

We did it ourselves. Hung a GE panel outside. Replaced in the inside (sub)panel with another GE box for everything we couldn't move.  

I was never planning on moving or selling the house, but ended up getting divorced, gave up the house and my ex let it go into foreclosure. If it was a problem, it was someone else's problem.

I have another house that we are slowly remodeling. I have a retired electrician doing some work for me at our business, so when I get all the wired pulled in the house, he'll inspect the plugs and switches and tie in the breaker box and give his blessing to it.

Good job on getting rid of that FPE fire starter.

For as bad a rap as they get, I must have run across dozens of FPE still in use today.

Check out this old bastard.

Attached File



All 3 phase. We're supposed to pull the covers off next week with the electrician and finalize how he's going to tie in a transfer switch for a generator.

+1

Yeah, hoping we can power through.  We'll see if the inspection passes

The magic of FPE is something to behold.     Most of it is lore handed down from apprentice to apprentice over the years.   Some of it is true.  I ran into a 20A breaker once that you could have probably just used for a welder instead of buying a machine.