No main disconnect

Found this service panel with no main disconnect. I have found in the past where there was a split bus panel that had added breakers but never a panel like this. I double checked to see if there was a disconnect at the meter but there was not. The panel is full with no more room for adding a breaker and it also has a double tap at the main lugs for a sub panel. My questions is in order to repair this, do you think this panel will need total replacement or can an electrician work with what’s there?

You’re correct that there is no single service disconnect what you have is a split bus panel with 6 service disconnects which is permitted. As you have stated the double tap to add a sub-panel is incorrect and need to be fixed. Judging merely from the photo’s an electrician should be able to fix this without replacing the entire panel by moving two existing circuits into a sub-panel to free up the 2 slots necessary to install the proper 2-pole circuit breaker.

Thanks for the help Robert. I took a closer look. So, the top six 2 poll breakers are needed to be off? It appears that the 3rd double breaker on the right controls the lower breakers. They run to the bottom of the panel and disappear under the neutral bus. The panel is not labeled correctly and was difficult to determine the “Main” breaker for the lower half. Could the 3rd breaker on the left also control some of the lower breakers? In the past when I saw a split panel there was a gap between the upper breakers and the lower breakers, making it easy to determine a split bus panel.

Typically one of the double pole breakers is labeled MAIN. It feeds the branch circuits in the lower half of the panel.

Look at the panel label about half way down… (I can barely see the word “Main” in your photo). Everything you need to know is on that label.

https://www.nachi.org/forum/attachments/f19/198189d1509708587-no-main-disconnect-dscn8753.jpg

According to the panel legend the 3rd breaker down on the right is the main but for what I can see, the label in the panel says the one on the left should be the main. Or does the label mean the space on ether side can be used for the main breaker,

It was typical for the 3rd down on the left be the branch circuit main. The other 5 spots were for things like the stove, dryer, water heater and A/C. The one position will have the factory conductors feeding the lower bus.