Where To Start?

The first step before starting any electrical project is to make sure you have all of the permits you need for your project.

Next, pull all of your circuits to your panel location. It’s recommended that you mark all of your circuits with the location they are coming from to make life easier when you start connecting them to the panel.

Finally, fully disconnect power from the panel. Working with live wires is dangerous and should be avoided if possible. If you have the luxury of owning a cut off panel, it as simple as going over and switching it off. For everyone else, you’ll have to contact your electrical company and ask about getting your electrical meter pulled.

Now is also a good time to draw up a map of your panel to use as a guide for when you’re putting in the circuit breakers. This ensures you know what circuit is going to what breaker and will make labeling the panel much easier later on.

What You’ll Need

Having everything you need before you start working saves a lot of time and frustration during your project. Below is a list of everything we recommend having before you start any work on your project.

Your Panel At A Glance

While panels may differ slightly in appearance, they all should function the same.

You should have two hot source legs, the two black ones at the top, and our neutral wire, the yellow one at the top. You should also have a ground wire which will usually be made of bare copper that connects to your grounding rods. If you have a sub panel, you will also have an extra ground wire, that other black wire of to the left, that goes back to the other panel and connects to the ground there. If you have a sub panel, you must remove the bonding screw that connects your neutral bar to the casing and add a grounding bar to the panel. It’s always best to match the manufacturer of your panel and grounding bar.

Hooking Things Up

To start off, hook up your grounding wire to the neutral busbar. If you have a sub panel, connect it to the grounding bar instead. Next, bring all of your wires into the panel through either the top or side knockout holes. We recommend starting with the lower gauge wires first as they are normally thicker and stiffer. Have your cable clamp connector already in place before you start pulling your wires through the holes. You are able to run two 14/2 and/or 12/2 wires through one 1/2in. knockout and cable connector which should save you from running out of room. Once inside, tighten the cable connectors until it’s snug and carefully remove the sheathing, leaving only around a 3/4in. piece coming into the panel. Make sure to keep the now unsheathed wires labeled and together with the ground wires being attached to the ground bar. Outside of the panel, anchor your wires to the wall within 12in. of the panel. We recommend using a multi cable staple because you can snap them open and close allowing you to easily anchor the cables in place.

If you have the luxury of having a "plug-on-neutral" panel, you can just push all of your arc fault breakers into place and move on. For the rest of us, unwind the pigtail on your breaker and run it to the neutral busbar making sure to start with the back row first. Next, if you’ve chosen to use a surge-breaker, go ahead and connect the neutral wire to the neutral busbar. If this is a sub-panel, connect the neutral wire to the ground bar instead. Try to get the wire as short as possible with little to no slack.

With all of your breakers now installed, you can now start to connect your wires to them. With regular breakers, connect the hot wire to the breaker and the neutral wire to the neutral busbar. With the arc fault breakers, connect both the hot and neutral wires to the breaker. When bending the wires, try to keep the bend from being too sharp as this can create a hot spot in the wire and just weaken the wire in general. Once you have all everything connected, all that’s left is to get it inspected and you’re good to go.