At 4am on Monday morning I stumbled to the bathroom as I so often do in the early morning to relieve the pressure from the previous night’s drinking. No, not that kind of drinking, just drinking water or juice, but I have a bad habit of drinking something late at night.
I flip the light switch. Five seconds later, in prime blurry eyed target finding mode the light blinks off. I couldn’t reset the breaker/s at that time because my roommates were asleep and turning off the power (there is no “master bathroom only” breaker) may have turned off their alarm clocks.
After class on Monday night I came home to try the breakers and discovered that a few other things in my home didn’t work. The dining room lights, fireplace and bar outlets, bar lights and balcony lights are all out. Flipping all the breakers did nothing.
Unlike my plumbing debacle, I doubt I’ll be able to do this handiwork myself. Electricity is not something I want to mess with. Thank goodness this circuit that is blown (I’m guessing that is the problem) is only connected to non-essentials (doesn’t affect the fridge or my PC or either of the other bedrooms or bathroom).
But, there goes another few hundred (or more) dollars on an already tight budget.
Electricity is a lot simpler to work with but you are right not to mess with something you don’t know about. My initial guess is that the circuit breaker itself has gone bad. Some folks think that you never have to replace a circuit breaker (like you used to with fuses) but that is wrong.
Breakers snap right off the busses but you have to get into the main panel with live busses or shut down everything with the main buss still “hot”(up stream of the main breaker). There is always a live buss behind the entrance cover (some folks refer to the entrance as “the panel”.
You have to match the circuit breaker to the entrance (the box the breakers are in) i.e.—square d– and the amps rating to the one you are replacing. Otherwise it’s just one wire to move.
Circuit breakers that are bad have a “spongy” feeling when you snap them–but thats something you just have to learn from experience–kind of like knowing when a girlfriend is going bad.
You could have a short in a switch also but it sounds like you have a circuit (and by extension- a circuit breaker) that has seen heavy load over time and is worn out (the cb, not the circuit). Or— something completely different!
Circuit breakers are there to prevent the wires in the walls from getting too hot from too many amps–not to protect the equipment that you are using at the time. Amps X volts=watts. I.E.:30 amp
times 120 volts=3600 watts. That exceeds a 14/2 wires cap.–that means a 14/2 wire circuit will have a 20 amp breaker and putting a 30 amp breaker in that circuit might start a fire.
actually that circuit is one of the least used in the whole house…so I don’t see how it got overloaded. Maybe it was just old? I know it is “simple” – but I also know that a mistake in plumbing shoots water at your face, while a mistake with electricity kills you.
Right! Learning on the job can kill you. Some circuit breakers are weak right out of the box. Did the breaker snap open when you “flipped it”? Does it show red?
ummm…. I’m not even sure how to answer that. They were just black switches that switched up or down.
Just for information only–here is a goofy video which explains what I have said pretty well.http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Replace-a-Circuit-Breaker-57208272
lol: “target finding mode”