My guess is the terminals got a little lose (or some oxidation got in, this is aluminum) and it heated up a bit. Not enough to cause any real problems but enough to melt the insulation.

The cost to upgrade the main panel probably would run around $2K around here, of course that's over and above what it would cost to actually increase the service to 200A if it isn't already there. You'll need to start with your power company to find out what they want, then an electrician can do the changes that they won't cover.

I'd redo that whole garage panel. While the QO panel isn't bad, frankly there's enough wrong with the installation that you might as well replace it (I'd upgrade the feeder so that you can use a 120/240 panel). If you're doing the work yourself, the panel itself is cheap enough. You can reuse those QO breakers.

There's several issues I've noticed in the pictures other than the general sloppiness.

1. Check as to whether the Gould/ITE breakers in use allow multiple connections on the terminals. I don't use those enough to know off the top of my head. You'll typically find this marked on the breaker (though often it's hard to read moulded type on the case itself).

2. As you note subpanel needs proper fittings where the NM cable enters. There's actually not any limit on the number of cables you can stuff through a hole, though when you put the proper fittings in, they will be listed for a certain maximum number.

3. The blue marker is ugly but ok.

4. Obviously you've caught that connections need to be in boxes and broken receptacles need to be replaced and that ancient surface mount stuff has to go (next to last picture).

5. Boxes need covers.

6. The subpanel is not fed and wired properly, as you know grounds and neutrals need to remain the separate. You are correct in your guess that since this garage is attached (flimsily as it is) it's still the same structure and doesn't need a separate ground system.

Good luck.

Thanks Ron.

More photos below.

The Gould/ITE EQ-P breakers have no information on them as to multiple wires being ok.

The screws on the 40A range breaker were not tightened enough. Got that corrected.

Spent most of the last 3 hours trying to make a sheet properly listing the circuits. Turning breakers off and on and going around the house with my testers.

Got most of it figured out save for the one tandem on the left. The lower circuit on it is a mystery at this point. I am just leaving it switched off for now.

The GFCI breaker on the top left doesn't test correctly. Pushing the test button when the circuit is live does nothing. It's for the master bath receptacle by the sink.

I had called the electric company to mention that the transformer on the ground behind my bushes is sinking into the ground, sort of like quicksand. They sent a guy out with a bucket truck. I talked to him for a bit. He said it was ok. Probably been like that for 20 years. He said nothing to worry about. But my hedge was blocking access to the side they need to get to with their poles. So if there were an emergency, they would have to chop my hedge down to get to it.

Then I mentioned I was thinking of changing the 100A panel over to 200A. I asked if the cable running up to the meter was large enough. He said it's most likely 1/0. Unless I was pulling 200A at one time, it would be fine. He pulled the face plate around the meter off to have a quick look to verify the wire size. So I guess it's fine for 200A as long as you don't actually load 200A on it. I don't foresee that happening.

So while I am checking and labeling circuits, I discover that at least 6, maybe more, receptacles are showing either switched hot/neutral, or open grounds. Two of them are kitchen counter area receptacles that have switched wires. Not surprising to me based on what I saw of the homeowners DIY work elsewhere with running cable tv lines and phone jacks. A simple book purchase at Home Depot covering basic electrical, would have clearly shown how to correctly wire the receptacles.

So now I have go go take each receptacle out and look at what was done or not done. And who knows about the ceiling fans and lights. The to do list gets longer.

I did not have the house inspected when I bought it. Just decided based on my knowledge of homes and their systems, that I would just forgo the expense. The incorrectly wired outlets and other misc stuff would not have blown the home purchase for me. All homes have their issues.

Just at the planning and organization stage at this point.

Questions:

1. The current panel has a mess of grounds and neutrals on the left side. (And a whole bunch come through the top without any kind of romex connector on the main panel.)

Any brand/model 200A panel suggestions for better organization?

2. How do you handle the wires to the neutral/ground bars that will possibly be too short when swapping to a new panel? Are pigtails allowed? Is there a limit on how many?

3. The one photo of the blue receptacle in the master bath below shows what I found there. I had found similar crimp connections on the master bath light switch when I put in a bath vent fan. I replaced those with Wagos.

Are those blue crimp connectors even allowed?

I have only ever used those on my vehicles when I need to do some 12v wiring work and even then, not with great faith in them. Seems highly suspect to do that on 120V.

4. Once the meter is pulled, I can do much of the panel work removal and installation/wiring of the new panel to save some money. It would take me more time, but I certainly can do it.

Then I can call a local electrician to come have a look at it and do the final main power connection to it.

Any issues with my doing it that way other than having the fridge off for quite a while, possibly overnight depending on how fast I was working?

My one neighbor down the block is actually a commercial electrician. I suppose I could knock on his door, with a box of bakery donuts in hand.

I would need to get a permit from the tiny town office here. They say anything over $1,000 needs a permit. And for electrical, I have to call the state and have them do the inspection.

NM cable MUST go through a proper fitting. I suspect you can see evidence of why if you peel some of that red tape off the wires in some of your pictures. I bet it was wrapped there after the sheath (and perhaps the insulation on the indvidual conductors) started to be cut through.

As for organization, take a look at what panels are available. Some even support the mounting of extra ground bars (primarily for subpanel use, but you can use them for rehoming your grounds even in a main panel). Some panels have nice long ground/neutral bars on both sides. Find one you like. Eaton (Cutler Hammer), Square D, GE area all good well supported panels.

Pigtails are allowed for both the current carrying wires and the grounds. In fact, this is how you correct the "too many wires under one screw" problem.

Anything that's listed for connections is fair game. Wagos, Wire nuts, etc... I suspect those connectors were fine. Just watch out for stuff that looks automotive (that deform the barrel of the connector when you crimp it).

Obviously the non functioning GFCI needs to be replaced and the open grounds and hot-neutral swaps need to be corrected (which means finding out where they were swapped which might not be at the receptacle that you detected the error: if the white wire is not at ground potential, something feeding it up stream is wrong).

You definitely sound like you are capable of doing the work if someone pulls the meter for you. Sounds like you have a reasonable power company. Many electricians won't come in and "approve" DIY work because of liability (and just general animosity towards DIYers sometimes). You can call around and see if you can get someone to do so.

Oh, and if the breakers don't say two wires are OK, it's probably NOT OK.

All the full size single pole breakers in there have 2 wires on each.

I will probably go with a 200A Square D QO panel.

That should allow enough space to get all the breakers wired with only 1 wire. I know the QO breakers can take two and are listed for 2. Seems to boil down to what the inspector guy says when he shows up. So I would rather play it safe so I don't have to call him back when the time comes.

I can just swap out the 200A main for a 100A for the time being.

Otherwise it seems those 1/0 aluminum lines currently coming in would need to be sized up.

What is the minimum size for 200A Aluminum main lines coming in from the meter?

The guy from the electric company didn't mention anything about the meter needing to be swapped if I go to 200A.

I found a total of 9 receptacles incorrectly wired. 5 in the basement alone. Two had no grounds hooked up because the ground wire was not long enough to reach, so they just pushed it in the box and left it.

Others had hot/neutral reversed.

Upstairs, both kitchen counter receptacles on back splash area had reversed hot/neutrals. And neither was GFCI.

Receptacle next to the back door was reversed.

Master bath has the receptacle by sink being fed by the non functioning GFCI in the panel.

So I am putting in GFCI receptacles in the kitchen and master bath and basement bath.

What is the rule on the GFCIs in bathrooms? The master bath has another oddball receptacle to the right of the vanity, but it is located down just above the baseboard near the floor. Weird location. It is within 6 feet of the sink. It is one a different circuit than the other receptacle up by the sink.

I noticed another interesting bit of work. When redoing the basement receptacles, some of the ones on the outer wall are the blue plastic boxes. The foundation is block. And there is styrofoam sheet insulation on the block wall. Space wise, as far as depth to the styro from the face of the drywall, is about 2 to 2.5 inches.

So what they did when they finished the basement apparently, was to use the blue plastic boxes they had on hand that were too big, and simply sawed off the back of the box completely. And ran the wires into it from the open back.

I am guessing a big code violation there. I can imagine a spark setting that styrofoam ablaze very easily.

Whoever finished the basement must not have thought about the need to install electrical.

1/0 aluminum do not have 200A ampacity. The service wires (the stuff ahead of the meters, might be OK with smaller) but once it's in a structure rather than freespace, you are probably going to need to go up in size.

All receptacles in the bathroom need to be protected by GFCI. Doesn't matter how far away from the sink they are.

Insulation in the box isn't a problem. The backless box certainly is. Cut that out and put a proper one in.

Those short grounds are typical of work by ignorant hacking DIYers: "What's this extra wire for? I don't know, so I'll just cut it off and stuff it back in the box."

If I were you, I'd put GFI outlets in the bathroom and then replace the GFI breaker with a regular breaker. It sounds like you will need two outlets -- one for the oddball outlet on a different circuit, and one for the rest of the outlets. Obviously you will need to figure out which outlet is "upstream" so it can protect the rest.

Since you're going to replace the main panel, go ahead and get one with more spaces so you can separate those doubled-up circuits. Even though the Square D breakers are rated for two wires under the screw, if you separate them you'll be saving yourself future headaches.

There's nothing wrong with the circuits with two wires provided they are terminated appropriately. Even a pigtail with wire nuts such that only one wire goes under the screw is fine.

GFCI receptacles are certainly cheaper than GFCI breakers, but I see no reason otherwise to prefer them.

I actually heard an argument in favor of gfci breakers -- when a gfci receptacle trips, people have a tendency to just reset it and carry on, ignoring whatever actually caused the problem. If the reset button is clear on the other end of the house down two sets of stairs through a crawlspace and in a dungeon, they at least have some incentive to look into it!

I did replace the GFCI breaker with a normal one.

I added a GFCI receptacle to the left of the kitchen sink.

And I found out the master bath receptacle on the wall with the light switch, feeds the kitchen receptacle to the right of the sink. So I put a GFCI in the master bath and a GFCI label on the kitchen receptacle to the right of the sink.

The oddball receptacle in the master bath down by the floor, got swapped for a GFCI.

And the lower bath got a GFCI as well.

So the main panel is all normal breakers now.

I was busy painting the garage OSB and drywall. Finally getting around to the sub panel again.

Found one on Ebay for a decent price. And it had all the breakers installed. The last guy was going to use it for a sub panel but decided to go with something else.

This sub panel has screw down breakers. (see photos below)

So I got 50ft 6/3 w/g NM-B cable. It is still wrapped up.

The current sub panel "feed" is 12/2 romex coming out of the wall just a tad under the radon exhaust pvc.(see photo) Prior owners handy work. That exit hole is right by the out wall of the house.

That 12-2 feed is routed through the double rim joist into the house lower level bedroom. The joists are perpendicular to that wall and run straight back to the utility room which has an open ceiling. The rest of the lower level is dropped ceiling tiles.

The 12-2 feeder was routed diagonally across that lower room through all the 2x12 joists, across the doorway, and where the stairs are, and then 90 degrees to the right into the room with the main panel.

In routing it, it was snaked through holes being used for other larger cables. I have my doubts about being able to route 6/3 through the same path. Many of those holes are going up on an angle.

So I probably will wind up drilling new holes in the joists to run the 6/3.

Another option presented itself today as far as the exit hole into the garage for the 6/3 feed.

I removed the hose biib connection that was in the garage. See photo where drywall needs to be patched. (The hose biib was left there after the garage was put on. That wall was formerly the front of the house.)

So that hose biib hole is closer to the main panel by a good 11 feet. The hole size is just under 1 inch.

If I route the 6/3 cable through that spot, it would require less drilling of joists.

But it would require me to run the cable to the right along the garage wall to get to the new sub panel.

I have not decided if I am going to mount it just above the radon pipe in the corner, or the adjacent wall. They are both outside walls of the garage.

So the question then is, if I route the 6/3 along the wall, can I enclose it in some leftover schedule 40 pvc conduit I have for protection? It would be about 51 inches off the floor and head to the right about 12 feet.

Or do I need a different cable altogether since it is in a damp location?

The bolt down breakers (QOB) are fine but they're harder to come by. You'll have to go to a real electrical supplier or get them online. The home centers aren't going to sell them.

It's a point of discussion as to whether your exposed NM cable requires ANY protection. That's one of those things that's more at the discretion of the local inspectors than by the electrical code. However, if it is needed to be protected from damage, sched 80 is the only PVC that is allowed. Sched 40 won't cut it.

Is it allowed to put the 6/3 NM-B inside EMT? If so, would 1 inch suffice?