I need to replace a faulty breaker. Here's a picture of my main breaker box. There's no master switch that I can see that shuts off power to all of the breakers.
Following the line up and out of the box, it runs along the basement ceiling and out through a hole in the foundation.
Let me know if you need to see something else.
Edit. Resolved! I found a master switch on the outside of the house in a panel adjacent to the meter. Weird that anyone can just walk up to my house and turn all of the power off.
My house is like that too. No master shutoff anywhere, so I'd have to call the power delivery company out to shut it off at the meter.
That would never pass inspection here... Might depend on where you live I guess
I toured a house that still had TL fuses and cloth-wrapped electrical...No inspection needed in 2025 if it passed in 1940 and was never updated!
That’s normal. It’s meant to be that way. You only have to get up to current code when making major changes, and only for what you’re changing. If you always had to be up to date, no one could afford to maintain a house: you’d be making changes every year.
Yeah, I was just giving an example that inspections aren't required. A less extreme example would be asbestos tiles/insulation but that's not dangerous unless you damage it
Lots of houses haven't had an inspection since they were built, and code was almost always more relaxed.
My parents built their house in the 70s, like my dad was a mason and he did all the brick, and any contractors for the rest was friends and family. And in a small county they all knew the inspector too.
I'm sure lots of stuff was overlooked because it was "good enough" and when it was sold 5ish years ago it was "as is" because a ceiling fan on a dimmer wouldn't have passed inspection.
Like it wasn't a lemon, everything was good.
But the buyers couldn't have known for sure because they waived inspection.
Tldr:
Lots of homes in America won't/can't pass inspection, and with the market someone is always willing to roll the dice to buy anyways.
even if it wat built in 2015 it probably would fail inspection for something today even though that sonething still works like new.
I mean, I helped wire a house at 14 just because my dad thought it would be good to learn, but I'm not a real electrician.
So others probably know more, but to my knowledge that stuff moves slow so not a lot would have changed since 2015...
That being said, new homes are built to meet bare minimum standards and corners are cut everywhere they can be. So it might fail inspection because things are breaking, but not for things that work but have become against code.
https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/advocacy/docs/top-priorities/codes/code-adoption/2023-national-electrical-code-significant-changes.pdf there are a few things in there that could hit any house. Gfci to non counter kitchen outlets for example.
Have you looked at the meter box? Around here there will be a cover you can flip up under the meter head and turn off the breaker you find under it.
I recently found out this is code now where I live: you must have a master breaker outside with the meter. While I can understand the benefits from a safety and service point of view, this seems mostly like an invitation for “pranks”.
My electrician had to go through contortions to explain how one approach let him just make the change I needed whereas the other may have seemed cleaner but would require him to redo the service entrance to add an outside main breaker
Ugh. Cost-prohibitive to replace the panel with a main breaker ?
Last I looked it was like $1500