Challenger Electrical Panel Problems

So if there ever is a short or other problems the surge of power melts wires and starts fires in your home.

Challenger electrical panel problems. How to tell if you have one. In your notes you also report serious over fusing an additional risk of fire or shock. Most of the breakers were challenger brand breakers from the original installation but some were siemens brand breakers from a remodel about 5 years after the house was built. Hi i have a challenger sl20 20 40 panel installed 26 years ago.

You can see this in action from the picture below. Sunday march 1 2020 challenger brand electrical panels were installed in homes during the 1980s and 1990s but have since been found to have a defect that causes the bus bars to overheat under normal operating conditions. The name zinsco anywhere on the panel is a sure sign it should be replaced. Check your panel today as challenger was very popular in the 80s and 90s.

I would like to install an eaton whole house surge protector. I did not have any problems with the panel or the breakers and all of them are the original ones. Scalding and overheating on an electrical panel is a fire waiting to happen. Today i ran into a challenger 200 amp main panel most likely installed in the early 90 s.

However there are a few brands of breaker still in use today that might not only fail to protect. Certain types of challenger electrical panels and breakers catch fire. These conditions alone are sufficient to damage the electrical panel rendering it unreliable and thus unsafe independent of any innate reliabilty issues with challenger panels and breakers. To break it down the circuit breakers have been known to overheat cause scalding on the bus bars.

Circuit breakers are designed to keep you and your family safe. Wiring a circuit is a difficult process and it turns out that the circuit breakers used in the challenger electrical panels were faulty causing the circuits to short out and overheat under normal circumstances. Due to this some insurance companies are now requiring challenger panels to be replaced. Also many gte sylvania or sylvania panels are simply re branded zinsco panels or contain the problem zinsco design.

Challenger electrical panel cover off the issues with challenger outlined.