This weekend we got a hand from an electrician friend to fix up our breaker box.  When the old box was installed in 1984, it was mounted to the damp brick wall with particle board.  By the time we got to it, most of the board was on the floor and the box had been hanging from its ground cable.  The meter was in the same condition hanging from its service cable.

We pulled everything out of the way Saturday morning and mounted a 4′ x 3′ sheet of 3/4″ pressure treated plywood hung from the joists on two zinc-coated steel struts.  This gives us a strong base that is less likely to suffer from rust, rot, mold, or critters in a damp environment like a basement.  It also has a good 1″+ of air gap behind the plywood to avoid direct contact to the sometimes damp wall.  (We have been dehumidifying which helps and have also located the main source of our water leak which we will fix in a few months.)

While we were at it, we installed a new 100A breaker box to replace the rusty 28 year old one.  I was being Mr Fussy the whole time making sure all the wires were parallel and staples lined up in a row, but the electrician didn’t mind.  We also tried to tidy up the wires on the ceiling by bringing them all to one side rather than cutting diagonally across.  I have some ideas to tidy this up some more, but for now it will do; we should have very little in our way when we install the PEX for our radiant floor heating.