Supposing the circuits in your home were fed by a fuse box, with screw-in fuses. You may have seen these in some homes. You may also know about the common (but unsafe) practices of over-fusing (installing a higher-amperage fuse) or putting a penny in the fuse socket behind the fuse itself. These actions were taken to deal with the nuisance of fuses frequently blowing on overloaded circuits, or to deal with the lack of a spare fuse.
Now, let's assume that an inspector notes some over-fusing and pennies behind some fuses, and waves the warning flag that it is a hazardous condition - a "safety defect". Inspectors, electrical contractors, and even realtors would agree that these conditions constitute a hazardous condition and should be corrected immediately. Red-flagging the Federal Pacific Electric ("FPE") Stab-Lok® panel is essentially the identical warning; it is the exact equivalent of having more than 1/3 of the circuits over-fused and/or with pennies behind the fuses.
Failure to trip properly under overload and/or short circuit is the basic safety defect of the FPE breakers. For example, if an overload or short circuit occurs in the clothes dryer or the circuit feeding it, the breaker is expected to trip open to minimize the resulting fire hazard. But, if it is an FPE Stab-Lok® two-pole breaker, extensive testing (by FPE, CPSC, UL, and others) has demonstrated that it cannot be depended on to trip properly. In the CPSC tests, a substantial portion of the FPE two-pole Stab-Lok® breakers, the type that would feed the dryer circuit, failed to operate properly. A significant portion of them jammed and would not trip at all, no matter what overload current was applied. Additional test data shows that there are also problems with the FPE Stab-Lok® single-pole breakers and combination breaker/GFI units.
This type of safety defect becomes important if and when there is a short circuit or substantial overload in the downstream circuit. Most breakers in a home are never called upon to trip, and the homeowner's perception is that "the breakers work fine". The same observation could generally be made if there were no breakers (or fuses) at all, just a hardwired system. In the event of an electrical malfunction, however, our safety may depend on proper operation of the circuit breakers.
In my own home, only two of the breakers have ever tripped during more than a quarter-century of our occupancy. I know nothing about the ability of any of the others to function properly, except that they are a brand and type that has not been identified as having any significant performance problems. There is no data suggesting that I should be concerned about their ability to function properly. With FPE breakers, however, there is a significant amount of test data and other information available that indicates a serious problem.
Additionally, there are safety problems in many of the FPE panelboards (panels), in which the breakers are installed. Some of the most common FPE Stab-Lok panels are failure-prone due to marginal interconnections between the current-carrying components. The failing interconnections overheat at high current loading, and, in the worst case, fire ignites within the panel.1
Details regarding both the FPE Stab-Lok circuit breaker and FPE panel performance problems are provided in the following sections.� The bottom line is this: based on the information that is available and the testing that has been performed, there is no question but that homeowners need to be alerted to this safety defect and advised to have it corrected. Unless the occupant is willing to live with the risk, the FPE Stab-Lok panels should be replaced.
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