As an electrician, I went to turn off the breaker for the circuit that I was working on recently at a customer's house. I went outside to her main service panel and found it locked. I went back inside and asked the homeowner why she had it locked. She thought it would be better for security reasons. Then I asked her what would happen if she saw smoke in her kitchen spreading quickly around the house. She said she would go turn off the main panel. What if you go outside to turn off the panel and realize you didn’t have the key? What would you do?
Would you go back into the smoked filled house to find the key? Would go into a fire to find a phone to call for help? Would you let your house burn down because you can’t reach a key inside your house that unlocks the main breaker panel? I asked the lady and she couldn’t answer me.
If you have a locked main breaker panel, I strongly recommend that you take the lock off. If you have a fire in your kitchen, you have to go run and find the key so you can go outside and unlock your panel to turn off problem circuits. But you are going to forget about it because you may not think that quickly when disaster, like a fire, strikes.
I told her to leave her panel unlocked because if you had an emergency, she could easily turn the main breaker off. What if she becomes incapacitated? Anyone can go out to her main meter panel and shut it off. When the fire department arrives, they could turn off the panel, if it wasn’t locked. If it’s locked, they will have to saw it off or cut it off, or pull the meter which takes more time while your house is burning.
Code allows you to have a main service disconnect so you can turn off the power in case of an emergency, or if you have a short circuit, or something is burning. When you are in a hurry, don’t rely on your brain to remember to bring the key outside and unlock it. Do you agree?
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Posted by: Electrical contractor New York | August 21, 2009 at 05:57 AM