Breaker, breaker…
A simple trick for finding and resetting a tripped circuit breaker
Everyone,
I found this on another Facebook group and thought it would be a good reminder here.
Hi everyone! So my family and I live full time in Florida and as a lot of you know it’s hot! my breaker recently started flipping occasionally. Well this morning I woke up and noticed my ac was not running. I saw that the breaker flipped. I’m pretty positive my breaker is no good since it doesn’t really want to stay in the on position. So my question is does anyone know how to replace them? I tried looking on YouTube for some guidance but I couldn’t really find anything. My husband and I are pretty handy but with electrical we just want to make sure we don’t screw something up or get electrocuted. Thank you for any tips or suggestions you may have!!!
Here’s the lesson
The circuit breaker in question didn’t need to be replaced, it just needed to be reset to OFF before turning it back ON.
Lesson #1
When a circuit breaker trips from an overload, it generally (but not always) goes out of line with the other breakers. That’s the first hint of which breaker is tripped in a panel.
Lesson #2
But you can’t just flip it back to the ON position. You first need to push the circuit breaker handle hard to the OFF position, and then push it to ON.
If you don’t push it hard to the OFF position first then the handle will feel kind of floppy and you might assume the breaker is faulty. But that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work.
Let’s play safe out there - Mike
Mike,
As a career electrician I've tried to explain this over the phone to countless people trying to save them a service call. Some get it, some don't. One of the things I'll tell them is that the tripped one will feel like a loose tooth.
Also, about 99 times out of 100 when a circuit breaker trips the circuit breaker itself is blamed. I'll guess that about 99 out of 100 circuit breakers that get replaced didn't need replacing.
The same goes for GFCIs, folks just have a hard time resetting them. When we would go to a tripped GFCI call we would always give them a new one with a tripped indicator light. The customer always feels much better paying for a service call when they get something new installed vs. just pushing a button for them.
Thanks much Mike...I needed to know that!!