back when we bought this house in 2021, we had the circuit breaker box replaced. in so doing, the electrician said that to do it, he needed to move the electrical drop to the back of the garage because CenterPoint Energy wouldn‘t approve of the way the wires hung over the garage. that meant moving the meter back there as well as putting another panel back there then running the power lines through the garage and to the panel at the house. the good part was, that the addition of the second (first, really) panel would allow us to easily add circuits in the garage itself such as for welding or more likely, EV charging. meanwhile the panel on the house was replaced. both are identical models, and we had to wait a bit for them to arrive because of pandemic delays.
fast forward to today, and we hadn’t done any of those things in the garage, yet. but, we’re having a standby generator installed by a generator company and while we were out of town, the electrician (and the plumber) arrived today to do the work. we talked to the electrician a couple of times during the day and he kept us updated on the work, made sure the a/c worked after he reconnected everything, etc. i mean, the miracles of modern tech i was able to lower the thermostat while we were driving back so they could see it come on properly. he seemed like a good guy and from what i can see, generally did good work. but…
when i arrived home, they were done for the day and i went to see what they had done so far. the electrician removed the first panel that was hooked to the meter completely and replaced it with the automatic transfer switch. as it is right now, i have no way to add circuits to the garage except to run wires back to it from the panel on the house. of course, if i want high voltage stuff like I previously mentioned, that would be a pain in the ass, if at all possible. my essentially new (first) panel is gone, and let’s not forget i paid for that work as part of the job three years ago. if i had been home there would be NO WAY i would have let him do it the way he did. i know why he did it the way he did, it makes sense if i never was going to add circuits to the garage. but he never asked me that.
i called the company and they’re supposed to call me back tomorrow and let me know. but they are going to reinstall my panel or replace it with a new one if they trashed it, or they can take their generator and everything else back while i cancel all payments. hopefully for everyone’s sake they will send the electrician back to reinstall or replace my panel. but it’s irritating to go through this kind of garbage and have to spend time dealing with it instead of, you know, my life and my plans. it drives my crazy that someone does some stupid thing i would have never have thought of and I have to deal with that. who would have thought he would remove an entire circuit breaker panel? when the guy came out to bid on the job he said the transfer switch would go on the wall near the existing panel. if he had to move stuff that would have been fine. but right now I wouldn’t mind seeing all this $#!^ gone, generator and all. 🤬