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Used to trust panel labeling until an apartment complex fire scare last month
I used to just glance at panel schedules and assume they were accurate. Then last month at a 12-unit building in Portland, someone had swapped breakers without updating the labels. I shut off what I thought was unit 3 and nearly got lit up because unit 5 was still live. Now I always verify with a tick tracer before touching anything. Has anyone else found panels that were totally mislabeled?
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the_lucas4mo ago
Labeling every breaker with a numbered sticker and a map fixed my trust issues.
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hannahw305mo ago
Was there any pattern to the mislabeling you found in that old house, @xena_brown50? Like were they just scrambled around or did they try to make it look sort of correct? I found a panel at a duplex once where someone labeled everything for the wrong units but swapped the numbers in a predictable way, and I almost wonder if that was intentional to mess with people.
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xena_brown505mo ago
That's a rough way to learn that lesson. Those apartment building panels are always a mess from tenants swapping things. I found one in an old house where every label was wrong, like someone just put random numbers on for fun. Now I always double check with a meter myself.
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