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Same Day Service
Since 1992
Call The Gentleman Pros Now!
(780) 628-1734
We're In Your Neighborhood!
Same Day Service
Since 1992
Call The Gentleman Pros Now!
(780) 628-1734
Need to upgrade your existing electrical panel or install a new one? Let one of our knowledgeable Edmonton electricians do it for you.
Your electrical panel is an integral part of your home’s electrical system. It connects your house to the grid and provides important safety functions.
So if you are having problems with yours, it isn’t something you can put off. Using their wealth of knowledge and experience, our licensed electricians will quickly figure out the problem and promptly fix it.
You are our main concern and our commitment to you is 100% customer satisfaction. We provide a lifetime warranty on all our panel change-outs. We pull permits and have it inspected by the municipality so you know it is done right.
To ensure we have only the best electricians in Edmonton, we carefully vet each and every one of them. We want you to be comfortable in the knowledge, you have a trustworthy and skilled tradesperson in your home.
Call Edmonton’s most trustworthy electricians. We always have one of our helpful customer service agents ready to take your call, no matter the time of day or night. Or you can request a service directly online with our handy form.
You’ve tripped a circuit breaker, so you head to your electrical panel to reset it. Once you get there, you realize that none of the breakers have been labeled. So what should have been a quick and easy job has turned into you examining each individual circuit breaker to see if it has tripped.
Your electrical panel should have a map that identifies the main breaker and the circuit each individual breaker controls. It is usually on the inside of the panel’s door or cover.
There’s already a good chance your electrical panel has a legend. But this doesn’t mean it is accurate or you will understand it. There’s a good chance the legend has:
There are two many reasons you want an accurate and legible circuit breaker legend and both come down to increased safety for you and your house.
If there is a power outage, you don’t want to be fumbling around in the dark trying to find the right circuit breaker because they aren’t properly labelled. In the case of a flood or fire, properly labeled breakers will help you quickly find the breaker that needs to be turned off.
Electricity is dangerous stuff and if you or anybody is working on the electricity in your home, you need to shut off power to what you are working on. Remember safety first.
This requires you to turn off the breaker, so you need to know which one to turn off. Turn off the wrong run and you can hurt yourself. Plus you don’t want to waste time or pay for your electrician to stand in front of your panel turning on and off breakers until they find the right one.
Electrical panels are usually located in the basement, garage, utility/laundry room, storage room, or closet.
It is best to know the location before you HAVE to know the location if you catch our drift.
Open your panel’s door. Inside are all the circuit breakers, usually in two columns. The breakers on the left are labeled with odd numbers and the ones on the right are labeled with even numbers.
Each breaker will also have another number on it. This number is the amperage of that specific circuit. The standard amperage for most household circuits is 15-amps or 20-amps. There will also be dedicated circuits (called double-pole circuits) for items that draw a lot of energy like your dryer or air conditioning unit. The amperage is usually 30-amp.
The panel’s legend (also called the schedule) is usually located on the inside of the panel’s door. It usually has two corresponding columns with the rows on the left labeled with odd numbers and rows on the right labeled with even numbers. You may need to add the numbers.
If there isn’t a legend or your legend is old, there are several templates available online that you can download and use.
Yes, this seems like an odd step. But if you use a pencil, the writing will fade over time and you will be back in this same situation. Use a pen — a marker like a Sharpie is even better.
We recommend that you do a draft legend before permanently labeling the legend on the panel. You might need to change the first name you assign a circuit. This is much easier to do when you haven’t already written the name in permanent marker on the final legend. And if you do a draft first, you won’t end up with a messy legend.
switches and plug in something (like an easily moveable lamp) into every outlet and turn it on. This may trip a breaker or two, but it will identify the circuit that belongs to the tripped breaker.
This will go much easier if you have an accomplice (er, partner). One of you will stay at the panel and turn each circuit breaker off one at a time. The other will identify which items stop receiving power when a breaker is turned off. It can still be done without a partner, but you will be running back and forth a lot.
Another way to do this is to turn on everything in one room and then turn off the breakers until you find the breaker or breakers that correspond to that room. This is why we recommend using an easily movable lamp to plug into outlets. Once the circuits are identified in a room, you can unplug the lamp and with little effort carry it to the next room or outlet that you are mapping.
It’s important your labeling is accurate, complete, and legible,
When filling out your legend make sure your handwriting is legible for other people. You have defeated the purpose if someone else needs to reset a breaker and they can’t read your chicken scratch.
Also, use well-defined labels. Bedroom #1 or office may work in the short term or for you but will someone else know which room is Bedroom #1? Also, future owners or tenants may not use a room as an office so they won’t know what circuit that breaker controls.
