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The card inside a panel door is required to be there, required to be legible, and required to identify each circuit clearly enough that someone unfamiliar with the house can use it. Most of them fail the third test.

The failure is usually vagueness. A directory reading bedroom, bedroom, kitchen, lights tells you almost nothing in a house with three bedrooms and a kitchen with four circuits. The standard the code language points at is specific identification by clear description, which in practice means naming the room and what in it, such as north bedroom receptacles or kitchen counter east.

Loads that are not obvious deserve the most attention, because they are the ones that cause trouble. A furnace, a sump pump, a septic pump, a well, a garage door opener, an outdoor receptacle on the far side of the house or a circuit feeding a detached shed will all be hunted for at some point, usually by someone in a hurry.

Spare positions should be labelled as spare rather than left blank, so that a blank means unknown rather than unused. Circuits that were abandoned during a remodel should be marked as such rather than left with the description of a room that no longer exists.

Recent code editions also require the source of a feeder to be identified at a subpanel, so that anyone standing at the subpanel knows which upstream device controls it. In a house with a detached garage or a finished basement panel, that one line saves a great deal of walking.

Producing a good directory is a two-person job with a radio or a phone, working through the house circuit by circuit, and it takes an afternoon once. Writing it in pencil so it can be corrected, and photographing the finished card so a copy survives the panel, are both small habits that pay off years later.

A photograph of the open panel with all breakers visible is a useful companion to the card. It records the arrangement, the manufacturer and the amp ratings in one image, which is exactly the information anyone will ask for over the phone before a visit, and it is far easier to send than to describe.

Related reading: Electrical Troubleshooting Guide