ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area New Apartment, Old electrical

Beloved? I've been called worse...

What I meant was the need to check for all this stuff. Yes, there are fused systems that are grounded. Yet, for the majority of the period that fuseboxes were used, grounding was not something anyone paid much heed to. So, when I see three-prong receptacles and a fuse box, I take that as a hint to look deeper.

I own a house built in 1974 with a Murray split-bus fuse panel. It had pullout fuses for the range (50 amps), the dryer (30 amps), the AC (30 amps), and the feed to the edison base part of it (60 amps).

The edison base part of it had held 12 fuses and 11 of them were used.

The only problems with it grounding-wise were that it only had one ground connection to a nearby waterpipe. A ground rod was driven and a new ground wire run to where the waterpump comes out of the foundation.

I ended up replacing it with a Square D QO panel because the fuseholders were in pretty poor condition, and finding replacements proved to be impossible.

I think the builder must have gotten a deal on these fuse panels (which were used all over the development, as far as I know), since the 1975 NEC prohibited their use in residential applications.


[This message has been edited by brianl703 (edited 12-18-2006).]

As far as I know you could put a fuse panel in tomorrow morning as long as all the edison base fuse holders had the proper S adapters in them.

You're right, I think it was the Type S requirement that went into effect in 1975 and someone could have installed the proper type-S adapters in that panel to install it after that date. If the AHJ was ok with it anyway..

From what I understand, my building was built in the 40's and updated in the late 90's (new means 1996, not 2006). They ran new romex but kept the old fuse panels for some reason (former owner/landlord was cheap, had to get it up to date to sell). I opened the fuse box and there are grounds and neutrals in there. The noodle/ground bus seems original too, but it's maxed out (4 circuits).

I have no problems with fuses, and I haven't blown one yet, but my family doesn't always get it when I tell them why they can't run the hair dryer in the bedroom with the A/C running... among other stuff.