120ish year old house, existing wiring when I bought it was a mix of 100 years of wiring. KnT, armored, cloth insulated two wire (some of which had a separate copper ground added along side it at some later date, some two wire plastic jacketed NM with no ground, and some modern romex.  Oh, and also #18 stranded non grounded extension cords run through the walls feeding outlets  in some places. 

There was 200a service and a 20-30ish yr old GE panel in the basement that was in a bad location. Right next to a former basement window that now has ducts going through it for the packaged HVAC unit. Just outside that location is a low spot in the yard with drainage issues since (mostly) resolved. But water had been getting into the back of the panel for quite some time and had caused a lot of corrosion  and overheating with melted plastic in a few spots inside the panel.

I wanted to upgrade be safer, closer to current code requirements, and to move the panel away from being right up against the HVAC ducts and from the hole in the block wall with the potentially recurring storm water/drainage issues outside.

Also, there’s currently no outside main disconnect. The service entrance cable comes directly from the meter into the old GE panel.

So, I put in a QO panel a couple feet away as a sub panel, temporarily fed by #4 copper (green #6 thhn to the ground bus, which is isolated from and not bonded to neutral in the new panel) on a 90A breaker in the old panel.

As I had time and $ for breakers and wiring) I extended the a number of new circuits, and extended the newer circuits into the new panel, and added a bunch of new circuits to the new panel. 

Now I’m planning to get quotes from real electricians who actually know what they’re doing to add a new outside main disconnect,  pull a new service entrance  cable to the panel I put in, and remove the old panel. 

Was this a reasonable way to have gone about this?  Paying for a complete rewire all at once was an impossibility and the alternative was leaving things as they were for the foreseeable future?

Since these pics I have made it look a little less messy inside the panel, stapled things to the plywood above the box, and added a green #6 thhn jumper the left and right ground bars (hard to see behind everything else but they are both there and grounds and neutrals are all separate)to not rely on the metal enclosure.

I know it’s a little hard to see detail in these pics but I’m genuinely asking for your honest opinion about my plan and everything you see that I did incorrectly, especially if it’s potentially unsafe.

Thanks 

FWIW I’ve never had any of the AFCI/GFCI breakers trip, lights don’t dim when the A/C compressor kicks on, and everything seems to work fine. 

 

DIY new panel