Painting your electric panel

At a recent inspection for one of Steve Hall's Buyers, it was pretty obvious that someone had told the painters to "Paint the place!" or something similar, as indicated by the painted fireplace.

Another clue was when I went to look at the electric panel, which was located in a bedroom closet. While closet locations were common many years ago, we now know that the metal electric panel can become energized and hot enough to cause any flammable clothes that are touching it to burst into flames. Thus, we don't locate electric panels in closets anymore. If your panel is located in a closet and you can't relocate it because of financial constraints, many home improvement stores sell plastic cages that you can install over the panel to keep flammable clothes away from it.

Another thing we don't do to electric panels is paint them. Since most common household paints are flammable, if the metal electric panel can become hot enough to cause flammable clothes to fire up, the same can probably be said about flammable paints.

The other problem with painting electric panels is that when paint dries, it gets kind of hard, so any paint on the circuit breakers can cause them to stick and not trip when there's a problem somewhere. If you've got a short at your dishwasher, you really do want that dishwasher circuit breaker to trip rather than be stuck in the open position because it was painted.

Most electricians here in San Diego will want to replace the panel, wires, and/or circuit breakers if they have been painted since it is more labor intensive to try to clean them.

 

 

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