thought I'd look on the web for this and I found this site. Here goes...
my building was built in 1939 and has old cloth wire in it. My neighbors have all had their fuse boxes upgraded to circuit breakers, and since I recently fried a wire inside a conduit while hanging a fixture, I thought it's time to rewire the whole building. (I got an estimate of under $10k for the job)
but I just read on the WWW that since our fuses never blow, and we would get no additional power from the upgrade (got 100 amps already), that there's no real reason to change from fuses... in fact, it said that fuses are actually better protection than C breakers. So now I'm thinking to save a pile of dough and maybe only fix the kitchen wiring that I fried, and a few other assorted things that were on the estimate (if that electrician will still talk to me!), or possibly just have the rewiring done (to lose the cloth covered wire, ungrounded outlets, etc, but not change the panel-about half the cost.
I thought today, before I found this site, that I would call my insurance co, or possibly building and safety, and ask them what the deal is with changing the panel... if there's any advantage-- like lower insurance costs, or does it increase the value of my building, is it a lot safer, or what?
can you help me out here? Give me a clue?
thanks