What the?......

I did an inspection the other day, and was impressed that the main electrical system of an older home had been upgraded…little did I know. I ran accross something I have never seen before. The electricians used the old fuse panel as a gigantic junction box to tie into the existing wires. I’m not too sure about this set up. There are a lot more issues other than this, but I would like to hear comments on this; especially if you have seen this before.

Yes I have seen this in my house. We bought a lake cottage - home conversion and a 220 upgrade had been installed. The old box converted to junction as you said. It was a mess to clean up but I organized it, labeled everything and ran grounds all onto the old bar. Ive never showed it to the elec inspector who checks my home wiring incase he makes me do something expensive. Im guess this must be ‘ok’ since theres certainly no other options…in my case anyway. since we are selling im wondering what a home inspector will say, since I obviously cant do my own inspection. What did you say?

oops I mean 200 amp upgrade on previous msg. Also while trying to sort out this mess I encountered 14 awg cable with two hots to run two separate circuits…not 240. Well maybe others have seen that but ive certainly never seen that…sure glad I somehow found it without doing the 120v boogie.

Michael, looks like yours had a few wires. This one had all the original ones and a few more added to it. On all of the other electrical defects that I found, I am suggesting that an electrician investigates and repairs the entire electrical system.

Oh; by the way, before any of you (and you know who you are) get the brilliant idea of accusing me of doing the home inspection industry an infallible justice for saying “further investigate and repair”, it’s better that saying “you can’t polish that turd”! Another defect was that a 50 foot extension cord was wrapped up behind the gas range sitting on the floor plugged up to a counter top outlet. Classic!

From the photo I would ask if that EG bus is bonded to the enclosure and what is that large bare conductor at the bottom? Was that an EGC run with a branch circuit?

well now rob thats a darn good question and i even popped up and grabbed a light to peek in there since its only six feet away…funny how i think in different perspective now as home inspector but didnt realize that before. i actually can find no bond to the enclosure …the large cond at bottom i simply assumed before was probably on a rod…or who knows what down there, pretty confined crawlspace and i never thought of checking that out before…probably did far too much assuming. youll probably also notice the single red wire which is capped off…that was likely (its been awhile) one of the left over mystery wires after i managed to get everything straightened out…there were cloth sheathed cables, tar coated cables, ‘modern’ nm…yikes, it was a mess. so im interested to see somebody else ran in to that. thanks for the observations…love the input

I’m guessing that the large bare copper conductor is an old grounding electrode conductor.