planning the renovation of our church. Our fused 60 amp service installed who knows when needs to upgraded. The electrician, yes we are hiring professionals has told our property chair that the panel cannot be in the kitchen. I cannot fine anything in the Ontario code that says that. I’ve found that the panel cannot be located over the counter, over a freezer, in a kitchen cabinet etc, but I cannot find anywhere that says that it cannot be in the kitchen on the wall.
Having said all that is it reasonable to have a panel in the kitchen? Our old panel has been in the kitchen since the ’40s.
Thanks
Replies
I've never heard that rule either, though it could be something special for "commercial" buildings. The #1 rule (though often violated after the fact) is that the panel be completely unobstructed, with no counter, etc, below it.
Not allowed in closets or bathrooms. The kitchen rule might be a local thing designed to maintain clearances. It is not code but the code bows to the AHJ, Authority Having Jurisdiction.
Too often I have seen panels in kitchens that have counters under them and/or cabinets screwed in over them. This is a clear violation of working clearances and it makes it much more difficult and dangerous to work on them.
Makes some sense to prohibit kitchen placements as kitchens are one of the most common areas to get renovated. When renovated they usually get more counter space and cabinets. Too often over top of the panel. Much better to locate the panel in a hall, little chance of it getting blocked, or garage.
Thank you for the response. We have a fridge right by one of the entry doors. We want to move the fridge because when its door is open it blocks the entry. Right now the panel is over the counter. I was hoping that if we move the fridge and install the panel where it used to be , we would only have to move the panel about 5 feet. The next best option is to move it about 12 feet, between two windows in our meeting hall. We would have to move the mast and inlet, it would be hard to screen the wiring and the panel and we would have to move a lot of wires the 12 feet.
Easy to say but we won't be putting a counter or cupboard where the fridge used to be as it again would restrict movement in the doorway.
I'll check with the local inspector.
An ex-boat builder treading water!
Though the NEC doesn't prohibit panels in a kitchen, I think it's a good idea to keep 'em out of there.
Kitchens as a rule are hot, humid places. That canl kill a panel, depending on the panel design and the materials used for the busses.
I once did a house electrical safey evaluation for a client who had had a bathroom leght/fan/heater short out and burn. One subpanel was in the garage, and the thing had been exposed to high humidity over a period of years from an unvented clothes dryer. The breakers were frozen on the busses. The clips and corresponding bus contact areas of the two-pole breakers (for the water heater, clothes dryer, etc) were badly burned.
The client was going to remodel soon and the subpanel was to be moved. I polished the busses, used a very light coating of penetrox on the contact areas, replaced breakers or clips (these were Zinscos), and moved the breakers around in the panel so that the low-load branch circuits were on the worst burned areas. The client made it to the remodel without incident...but that didn't mean I didn't have an occasional nightmare about a midnight call with news of a panel meltdown.
Cliff
Not a few inspection departments make strong recommendations or outright prohibitions concerning how far the feeder can run inside a building from the meter to the panel or other disconnect means.
Used to be this was relatively lax, unprotected SEC run 40' through an attic, but increasingly they want 6' or less inside the building even with protection from conduit. The logic being that this run is, by any practical measure, fused. A fault in this run only stops arcing when the conductors clear themselves. This can be quite dramatic. Sometimes involving firemen and getting bids on a new building.
The usual answer when this issue appears is to either move these conductors outside the shell of the building. PVC under a slab or deeper underground being a common solution. The other option, and often the simplest, is to install a fused disconnect close to the meter and to run a feed to the panel.
We had a church meeting today and decided to leave the panel in its existing location and
wait for it
move the kitchen!!!
I appreciate the advice and had figured out a place to move the panel to a less conspicuous place, but now we will for a whole variety of questions move the kitchen.
To put in the new kitchen we need to put in a 45 minute rated fire wall to make a fire exit corridor. Unfortunately it will block off the light from a row of windows, that will now be in the new kitchen
Question: Are there glass blocks that we could have installed in the top two feet or so of the corridor wall to let natural light through into it?An ex-boat builder treading water!
For a fire-rated wall you can install wire-reenforced glass panes, though there is a limit on the total area you can do this way (since radiation through the glass can conduct a fire even if the glass isn't compromised). I don't know if there is a fire-rated glass block.
Thanks for the information.
An ex-boat builder treading water!