I keep getting blown... [Question for Electricians]

[arkmtech]

Meet our craptastic breaker-box.

A few months ago, we moved into a house within the historic district of our city & began restoration on it. Of everything the 2 previous owners had managed to screwed up, one thing that was done right was replacing the ancient wiring with modern grounded 12-2 gauge wiring.

Sure enough winter is on it's way here in the northern US - and because the furnace in the house (despite being converted to use natural gas) is unreliable & inefficient as all hell - we've been using ceramic electrical-heaters in our rooms to keep ourself from randomly slipping into hypothermia...

One thing not done well when the previous owners re-wired the house was that the electrician put every room on the 2nd floor on a single 20-amp circuit breaker, and everytime 2 of us turn our heaters on, it blows out.

I'm not an electrician by any stretch of the imagination - but I'm fairly sure that when breakers blow, they should feel a bit on the hot side. When this particular breaker blows, it's just barely warm, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's a faulty breaker that blows at the at even the slightest temperature change.

So here's my question:

• A) If I shut the power off at the main-disconnect to the house, can I replace the 20-amp breaker myself to see if it makes any difference?
• B) Is it safe to replace it with a slightly higher-amperage breaker (25-amps at the most)?

Advice/comments/thoughts/flames are greatly appreciated, and as always, much thanks in advance!

CLIFFS:
----------------------
1) Moved into 100-year old house
2) House was rewired 4-5 years ago
3) All rooms on 2nd floor are on a single 20-amp circuit
4) When breaker blows it is barely warm to the touch
5) Can I replace it myself, and if so, is it safe to replace it with a 25 amp breaker?

 

[acetic]

"I keep getting blown..." Hahah rofl... </immaturity>

I would call a local electrician or something of that sort and ask, and I probably wouldn't touch it (now this is just me), because knowing myself, I would still get shocked.

I'd assume a higher-amperage breaker could do the job, but don't quote me on this.

Sorry for limited response...

 

[MaMMa]

this sounds like something Ice Czar could help you with.

http://www.hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=93

try there

 

[xonik]

Stop right now an call an electrician. Someone here might know, but is it really worth risking damage to yourself, your home and/or your possessions and loved ones? Anyways, it sounds like a simple overdrawing of current. Your electrician will be able to tell you what's really up, though.

 

[haroldmeyer]

Whatever you do, don't put in a higher amperage breaker! Your breakers are designed for the size of the wire in that particular circuit.If you put in a higher amp breaker you could burn the wiring up and ultimatley the house.
Also, breakers are designed the throw fairly quickly and do not necessarily "heat up", especially the newer ones( in your picture the Cutler Hammer "BR" series, used to be Bryant BR series)

 

[wwparrish]

1) I cannot argue with the previous advice to call an Electrician. It would really blow to burn the place down and have the insurance refuse to pay off because of something you did . a) Since it’s the second floor it should be cheap to find the run to one bedroom up in the attic and cut it free of the other room and fish it down to the panel and it would be a good upgrade for the house. b) Buy one or two smaller heaters, change light bulbs to 75W or those really low wattage fluorescent kind, in short minimize usage by other devices while computers/heaters are on. LCD monitors ?


However, BS EET and worked several years while in college as an electricians helper fully qualifies me to spew stupid advice you should probably ignore, and I cant sleep, see item 1 above.

"But I'm fairly sure that when breakers blow, they should feel a bit on the hot side."

In short, nope, by the time you get there it would have cooled off and the bits that get hot are on the inside embedded in plastic and they have such fast trip times it seldom has time to heat up the whole breaker unless it had sat there a while just barely about to trip anyway when the second heater was cut on. In which case your 25 amp idea has not a chance of working. The extra 5 amps gives you just an extra 5A x 115V = 575 Watts of "juice". (yea yea, but these loads, heater, lights are mostly resistive loads so the simple form of the power calculation is good enough here, little or no inductance or reactance)

12-2 Romex per NEC (national electric code) is rated for 20A max, see item 1. That is 20 x 115 = 2300 watts . Check the labels on your heaters. most of the strip heaters, the ones with the glowy wire in them are at least 750W each for the little ones and the medium sized one I have (about 2O inches long) is 1370 Watts. Just with 2 of those you are over 20 amps. Add up your heaters wattage, light bulbs, and computers, assume 200 W per computer + 100 W for normal crt and see how far over 2300 watts your are.


A) If I shut the power off at the main-disconnect to the house, can I replace the 20-amp breaker myself to see if it makes any difference?
B) Is it safe to replace it with a slightly higher-amperage breaker (25-amps at the most)?

A) yes, shut off the mains, unscrew the panel front, the breaker will "tilt" out, some semi-gentle (it wont just fall out, you will have to apply some force) prying from the end of the breaker that is towards the center of the panel, will cause the end of the breaker closest to the center of the panel will raise up and you can "tilt" out the breaker, do this with the wire attached. TRIPLE CHECK the mains are off. If you kill yourself I will be very sorry but accept no responsibility. Unscrew the wire and put it on the new breaker, you insert the new breaker by putting in the side of the breaker that is NOT near the center in first. It has kind of a hookie thing, look and you will see and taking the old one out should have given you a feel for it. So, hook the outside side of the breaker in and then push it down until it seats firmly. Double check the wire is still tightly screwed down on the breaker. Double check the breaker is in the off position. Screw the front panel back on, flip on the mains, flip on the breaker, flip on the two heaters and watch the new breaker snap off in about 5 seconds as the inrush current from the heaters overloads it. However I really really feel the breaker is working its little heart out protecting you and yours exactly as it should. Replacing it with and exact replcement is a total waste of time. There are such things as slow trip breakers that tolerate a short term overload better than the normal ones that would be a safer bet with a better chance of solving your problem, I still hold little hope.


B) maybe, it wont burn down the house immediately, if the wire is not confined (enclosed in a tight space with no airflow or very tightly bundled with other wires) you probably be ok, but +5 amps is a 20% overload, bit much. IF you decide to do it make sure your smoke detector batteries are fresh. insurance paid up etc. wear cotton glove when handling breaker so no fingerprints.



Btw not all breakers from all manuf are interchangeable. Several are but not all, try and find a breaker made by the same people that made the panel and make sure it mounts the same. There should be a label inside the panel that tells you the "type" of breakers the panel will accept.

Call an electrician.

 

[BlindedByScience]

I've seen more than one breaker that would trip before it should. You need an electrician to amp clamp the loads and figure out what's really going on. If you've got a 20A breaker that's opening up with, say, a ten amp load.....it needs to be replaced.

Unless you've done this before, or unless you have a friend that has who can help, I absolutely positively recommend you NOT try this yourself. 110 / 220 will kill you dead as a hammer and it's not worth the risk.

Good Luck - B.B.S.

 

[Ice Czar]

Whatever you do, don't put in a higher amperage breaker! Your breakers are designed for the size of the wire in that particular circuit.If you put in a higher amp breaker you could burn the wiring up and ultimatley the house.
Also, breakers are designed the throw fairly quickly and do not necessarily "heat up", especially the newer ones( in your picture the Cutler Hammer "BR" series, used to be Bryant BR series)

^

the guage and the length of the wire
http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm

(which is why you dont run high draw power tools over long or poor quality extentsion cords)

sounds like the circuit is overloaded or there is an intermittent short
testing the outlets for proper ground would be a place you could start
and removing the devices being powered off that circuit, adding them back in slowly

actually determining the load on the cicuit is another thing you can do
by adding up the maximum draw of each device and or employing a watt meter

but when it comes to "fixing" or upgrading, you can replace a breaker yourself with catre, but use a profeessional for most things past that

you can get an outlet tester and a watt meter at your local hardware store
they range in price a bit but you really dont need the more expensive variety (and its unlikely theyd stock em anyway)

a few examples
outlet tester (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupt capable if you need that)
Watt Meter

 

[Bitchnmoan]

It's really not difficult to swap out a breaker. If you can build your own PC then you can certainly manage this little job. If you open the panel, it'll be really obvious what you need to do to make the swap. I'm just going to point out a couple safety things:

The main switch is often located inside that same box. The problem is that when you flip the switch, there will still be live power in there, at the point where your big supply cable hooks up to the top of the switch. If your main power can be turned off BEFORE it enters this box, you're in luck (you'll find this in older houses sometimes). If not, then you just need to be careful. Usually there is a good bit of physical separation between that main switch and the rest of the stuff in the box, plus the hot leads of the switch are usually recessed to the point where you can't get your fingers at them. Honestly, since your box looks new, it probably has newer and safer components in there so it will likely take an active and purposeful screw-up on your part to get zapped at the main switch. If you post some interior shots, we can help point out what is what.

Ok, so you flipped the main. Thing is, don't trust that your power is dead. Now, you could simply use a lamp plugged into an outlet to see if you have power there. However, since you suspect an electrical fault somewhere upstairs, I would personally not trust that method. Use a good tester (I like the Fluke brand, but you can definitely find cheaper ones out there) to make certain that there is no electricty going to the breakers. And check it AT or BEFORE the breakers - it does no good to check for dead power AFTER the breaker. For ground, you can use any place that you see a green wire attached (green is standard for ground in home electrical wiring). If there are no green wires, you'll probably see some bare copper wires (wire with no insulation) - this is also standard and should be a good ground. Now, when you check at the breaker and find 0 VAC, double-check that you have your meter set on AC, not DC. Easy mistake to make, though many circuit testers are AC-only. Again, I would not check it at an outlet upstairs - the breaker you are messing with is in that electrical panel, so that is the place you should be verifying your dead connection.

If your floor down there is damp at all, you should find some rubber mat to stand on. Do not use a grounded mat - that defeats the purpose. You want to AVOID being grounded, in the unlikely event you touch a live line. Last, when you're poking around inside verifying the dead circuit, try to have only one hand inside the box. With two hands, it is easier to make an inadvertant complete electrical connection with you as the conductor (this is why you don't want to ground yourself). After you confirm the power is dead, you can carefully use both hands. Anyway, these safety bits came from the Navy, where they had us poking around inside 20 kV power supplies on radar systems. I'm still alive so they must work

 

[Jicks]

I hate to say it, but it sounds like everything is working exactly as it should. Electric heaters pull a fair amount of juice, so it's no surprise that two on the same circuit will cause it to trip. In general, a breaker will NOT get hot to the touch, unless it was already being run at close to capacity. How many amps do these heaters draw? Let's say each heater is 12 amps. When you're running one, the circuit is running well under capacity. When you switch the second heater on, you are drawing 24amps. That's four amps higher than what the breaker (and wiring) are meant to handle, so it blows quickly. No chance for it to heat up. This is how everything is supposed to work, to prevent your wiring from burning up and setting your house on fire. Keep in mind that my example didn't even account for any other devices you may have running on that same circuit, such as lighting or televisions.

Before doing anything else, I would calculate the total load of everything you are running and see if you're just pulling too many amps. It is unlikely that a breaker as new as yours in a residential application is already bad. Possible, but highly unlikely.

You have said that all the rooms on the 2nd floor are on the same breaker. This may have been done for some reason, but it might be worth it to have an electrician come in and see if you can split things up a bit better than that.

I think your best bet overall is just to fix your furnace

P.S. you're not using extension cords on your electric heaters are you? Because thats a *really* bad idea.

 

[arkmtech]

First off, I just wanted to thank everyone for the overwhelming amount of wonderful advice on this - it's now pretty clear that absolute best solution to my problem (and most cost-effective, as I've been quoted around $4,600.00 to replace the furnace & re-do the immediate ductwork) will be to just install new wiring.

After spending some time up in the attic & looking over the wiring, assessing our electrical needs on a per-room basis, and after doing some basic research, I believe the best solution lies in doing the following:

• Remove the existing 12-2 gauge 20-amp wiring
• Install new 10-2 gauge 30-amp indoor wiring for each of the 3 rooms on the second floor
• Remove one of the current 20-amp breakers & install 3 new single-pole 30-amp breakers (one per room, so each room is on it's own circuit)

I haven't yet spoken with an electrician about this, so I have no idea if this is even a feasible idea yet. It might sound as if the 30-amp wiring is overkill, but when you consider that each of us have at least 2 computers /w CRTs, lamps, a TV, microwave & fridge, and then we want to run a heater in winter/AC unit in summer, it will probably be best to have the available capacity.

Again, all thoughts/comments are greatly appreciated - and another HUGE thanks to everyone who replied with their advice!

 

[Ice Czar]

if your able to locate a friend of a friend electrician
that vast majority of the work can be performed by you
but Id highly advise that a qualified electrician figure out the total length of the circuit (and thus the guage and breaker) and actually hook up the outlets and service

leaving you to fish the wires through the walls and get the fiberglass insulation out of your clothes
that would make their part of the job a breeze and affordable
but it would likely be on the sly, and thus potentially against the building code
sort of depends on the local codes, as a home owner you can technically get away with it or as a subcontractor for the electrician

while your at that
Installing Isolated Ground plugs

but be aware

Power Conditioning 101
While I’m on the subject, bear in mind that computer cabling makes it possible to do dangerous electrical things like connecting together the grounds of two separate buildings. Say you decide to run, for example, a 10Base2 (thin Ethernet coaxial; see my networking guide here) network cable between two buildings. If the network is earthed somewhere, the shield of the network cable will be at the potential of that earth. If the network then gets earthed in the other building, and if those two earths have different potentials because of poor earthing in one or both buildings, miswiring or power surges, the unfused, unprotected Ethernet cable will deliver the higher potential to the lower potential end.

If you’re lucky, this will just stuff up your network. If you’re not, it can fry computers, start fires (Ethernet cable braid is not designed to carry high currents…) and shock anyone unfortunate enough to unplug the cable.

 

[Bitchnmoan]

but it would likely be on the sly, and thus potentially against the building code
sort of depends on the local codes, as a home owner you can technically get away with it or as a subcontractor for the electrician

That's a good point, especially since his house is in the historic district. Some cities have ordinances and requirements for homes in those areas, so you may want to get an electrician anyway to make sure you're not screwing it up from a restoration standpoint.

Also, that box looks pretty small, along the lines of 100 amp service, maybe 150 amp. By putting in a pair of 30s, you're looking at increasing the overall load by 20 amps. Definitely check that before you do anything to increase your load capacity inside the box. What you might be able to do is juggle the existing loads - for instance, if both of those rooms are typically used at the same time, then maybe one can be shifted to another circuit that ISN'T normally used at the same time, such as the living room. This is just an example, but you could then swap the living room with one of those bedrooms, putting each bedroom on a circuit apart from each other without having to add new breakers or increase capacity on existing circuits.

I had the same problem when we re-modeled the first floor before we moved. The whole downstairs area was wired really goofy and even though there were a total of 5 separate circuits down there (some of them went upstairs as well) I found we didn't have enough capacity to safely run my computer, a space heater, and our HT setup at the same time - at least not with any lights on. I had to sit down and figure the amp load for each component, including built-in lights, for the whole first floor and re-design it from scratch. Nice thing is, electrical stuff is cheap and doesn't require a major outlay in tools. One solution I had was to split the main room into two halves - the HT half and the computer half. The computer section got the garage lights because I'm the only person who really used either one so I wasn't going to be overloading even though I had around 25 amps worth of actual load wired in.

Anyway, the key is to figure out what stuff you're going to be running at the same time, PLUS what stuff you will definitely NOT be running at the same time. You can put 30 amps worth of load on a 20 amp circuit, so long as you don't use all the stuff at the same time. Dining room could probably go with one bedroom and maybe the living room with the other. Anyway, you get my point.

 

[Ice Czar]

another thing to consider
while most people think of lighting strikes as a leading cause of surges
and for big surges they are, the most common source of harmful surges on a house circuit
will be high draw motors that intermittently turn off and on, like your refrigerator

 

[wwparrish]

You are going to find it extrealy difficult to attach the 10awg wire to a receptical, and it would violate code as the current capacity of the wire would exceed the rating of the outlet.

Sorry to say that option is not easily do-able. There may be some industrial outlets out there that would allow it but it would still probally be against code in a residence as then the cords to the applicances would be underated. The code considers the entire circuit from the panel to end device as a system. Thats why kitchen outlets are on a separate 12 awg circuit by themselves (or should be, you are grandfathered in) with 20 amp breakers as the high loads of kitchen applicances are considered. While for normal rooms you can have several rooms of outlets wired with 14 awg on a single 15 amp breaker. Talking new construction here. One thing to worry about is if you do start to make upgrades you might be forced to do more that you anticipated because your grandfather clause might become "broken".

In most states, if not all, you can do the work yourself ( /cheer for America ! ) , it just must meet code. I build my own house, which explains why my woodwork is still unstained after 7 years So the electrician "buddy" to put you on the right track and do the work yourself is a very good option if possible. None of this is difficult or hard once you get the code issues and circuit design figured out.

omg, call that This Old House spin-off show that comes and helps homeowners solve/do the work themselves/ issues like this. They LOVE places like yours.

 

[Crosshairs]

When we rewired our house, I hired an Electrician to come in and tell me what I needed to do the job correctly. He charged me $50.00 to come over and tell me what wires to use and how to run them.

I did that part myself, then he came back and charged me $100.00 to hook them all up in the panel, and hook up the outlets.
By running the wire myself, I saved about $250.00 in labor that the electrician would have charged me.

I dont need to pay someone to pull cable and drill thru my floors and things, Im perfectly capable of doing that myself. But by haveing him do all the hookups, I know it was done correctly.

 

[Ice Czar]

just thought Id throw this in as well
for about a year I worked at a precycle project in Boulder for building materials squirreling away all sorts of stuff
($10 an hour paid in tradeout is like $30 to $40 an hour in the real "retail" world)

but the point is the project was run off a solar powered system
which is basically what this is
> The DIY (or, if you must, "Ghetto") UPS
simply lacking the solar cells as a charger

which you can build to as large a capacity as youd like
further research materials are readilly available via google with a solar search bias