Well it's been 30+ years, but I grew up in a 24-unit apartment complex with FPE Stab-Loks throughout... My memories:
Apartment 24 - electric water heater shorted internally (line-ground). I was like 10 years old - neighbor (also young) came running to my house, parents not home, house is full of smoke, water heater is making scary noises. Breaker never tripped. I turned it off manually. Thank heavens that worked --- at that age, I don't think I would have had any clue what to do if it hadn't.
Apartment 5 - short in electric baseboard heater ended up tripping 100A main in meter stack (GE brand).
Apartment 2 - All units had one split-wired receptacle in the livingroom and each bedroom, the top half being wired to a wall switch. In some of the apartments, the top (switched) and bottom (unswitched) receptacles wound up on different circuits (MWBC). In apt 2, the maintenance man had replaced a damaged receptacle but did not remove the jumpers. When the switch was turned on, one of the breakers tripped, but only internally - it could not be reset.
Apartment 17 - during a conversion from electric heat/hw to centralized hydronic baseboard, heating contractor turned off breakers for electric baseboard dhw. DHW was still live despite breaker being "off," resulting during removal in light show and tripped main (again, GE)
Now, I will definitely say I am very much opposed to the FPE breakers installed in 24-unit apartment complexes in small Maine towns in 1980. Of course, some (or even most) of these failures could be blamed on age. During my time there, I proved multiple times (I was a curious/experimental youth...) that, most of the time, the breakers DID work...
Last edited by emolatur; 09/18/13 09:54 PM.
