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Fogel

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It's been some time since I wired a house, but I don't think I ever assumed a home would have LED lights when I wired it, and then overloaded circuits as a result. Because that would be a shitty way to lay out a house (you never know what homeowners are going to install). It's like the people that tell you they're going to buy relatively small light fixtures, you wire for that, and then they show up with ridiculously large lighting fixtures that have so many bulbs that your circuits can't handle it.

That being said, yeah, LED bulbs might help. But having to do that just to keep breakers from tripping would make me nervous about the entire house.


The fact he's only running into this when he has a lot of stuff left on for a prolonged period of time makes me wonder if 1) circuits are 'too full', and/or 2) if there was never an allowance for 'continuous duty' when they sized circuits, and they still just used standard '80%' rated breakers and loaded everything to the max.

As an example, let's say I'm casually laying out a 15A circuit using standard breakers. If all my loads are non-continuous, I can technically use a standard 15A breaker for 15A worth of loads. Where the 80% rating comes in, is when you have continuous loads (3+ hours, technically). If you have an entire circuit of continuous loads, you'd only be able (by UL and by NEC) to 'load up' that circuit breaker with 12A of load. But if you have 50%/50% on a general purpose mixed circuit, instead of calculating out 100%+125% you'd just do what I, and everyone else I've ever known, would do: put 12A on that circuit and not worry about whether stuff is continuous or not, because homeowners do weird shit and you never know when someone is going to leave literally everything in their house on for 3 days straight.



How do you feel about spending money on tools? For $100-$125 you can get a multimeter with an "amp clamp". Then you can reproduce what was happening and check to see how much current each circuit is drawing at the breaker.

View attachment 326888

When you say shit is tripping out after a prolonged period, my first guess is that the circuit breakers may be getting hot, and they're staying tripped until they cool off. I'd look for 12A+ on a 15A circuit, and 16A+ on any 20A. If this is what is happening, you should be able to actually feel the heat, and with a meter, see how much current they're handling. If you are getting 12A+ or 16A+ respectively, then yeah, this is probably going to happen each and every time you turn all that shit back on again for hours at a time.

Your options are:

  • do as lurkingdirk lurkingdirk suggested and try to lower how much current your general purpose circuits use
  • simply don't leave everything on for hours at a time (this might solve the issue)
  • possibly change certain breakers out to those that are rated for 100% continuous loads (I'm not sure they even make any 15A breakers with this rating?)
  • split some circuits in 'half' and feed each half from its own breaker (this would take a lot of tracing out and rewiring)
  • possibly add some dedicated circuits if you have some serious kit (like entertainment systems). I've wired single 2-gang boxes with 2 receptacles, on a 12g 20A circuit for people before.
My 3rd answer really isn't serious, because we've only been talking circuit breakers. If you were able to find a 15A breaker that was rated for 100% continuous loads, the 14g wire in your existing circuit wouldn't be. Meaning your breaker might then hold, but the wire in your wall is going to start getting hot as well. Generally you need to 'upsize' both the circuit conductors, as well as circuit breakers. I would treat 15A of continuous loads as 18.75 rounded up to 19, which is above what I'd even want to put on a 20A breaker with 12G wire. This is why it's SO MUCH EASIER to just size your 15/20A circuits to below 12/16A at all times.

Can there be a scenario like this where the breakers can affect other breakers like that? My bedroom has my PC, and I'd have that and the light on all day with no issues. But since the family came over, when the other breakers start tripping, my bedroom will trip out if I have the light + pc on at the same time even though I've left them on at days a time before.
 

lurkingdirk

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Can there be a scenario like this where the breakers can affect other breakers like that? My bedroom has my PC, and I'd have that and the light on all day with no issues. But since the family came over, when the other breakers start tripping, my bedroom will trip out if I have the light + pc on at the same time even though I've left them on at days a time before.

It might be time to move.
 

BrutulTM

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I don't know what's causing it, but i'd get it checked out asap. Very weird, especially if it started effecting multiple circuits at the same time. Is it always the same breaker getting tripped or multiple ones?
 
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The_Black_Log Foler

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Found 5 acres nearby with a shit ass old house on it. Land is primo. Close proximity to mine. Has another 5 acre lot next door that looks like it's being farmed but has been put up/taken off the market multiple times over the years. Thinking if I can score both I may do it...

I don't think the house could even make it in this thread. I think it's a teardown and maybe at best fix it up just enough to rent.
 

Lanx

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i hate this thread, i don't know wtf it is but just bought an amp meter now anyway!
 
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Alasliasolonik

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This is not proper in the grown up thread, no personal attacks in the grownup thread, and action will be taken
Found 5 acres nearby with a shit ass old house on it. Land is primo. Close proximity to mine. Has another 5 acre lot next door that looks like it's being farmed but has been put up/taken off the market multiple times over the years. Thinking if I can score both I may do it...

I don't think the house could even make it in this thread. I think it's a teardown and maybe at best fix it up just enough to rent.
You are a faggot and never listened to any advise. You should tell your mom to post here. She has the money.
 

lurkingdirk

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200.gif
 
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Erronius

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Can there be a scenario like this where the breakers can affect other breakers like that? My bedroom has my PC, and I'd have that and the light on all day with no issues. But since the family came over, when the other breakers start tripping, my bedroom will trip out if I have the light + pc on at the same time even though I've left them on at days a time before.
Sure. Could be possible if they're stacked next to each other in the panel. I'd look to see if they're stacked together on one side, like 1-3-5 or 4-6-8, etc. Excessive heat plays havoc with both wiring and breakers. There's not a lot of room around breakers...none in-between...and that heat could definitely build up.

I also looked up some common breaker temp ratings (upper range) because they are somewhat sensitive to heat. Many of the plastic molded-case breakers are 40°C/104°F, with some Square D (now owned by Schneider) actually being a hair higher at 60°C/140°F. But even 140°F isn't that high, if we're being honest...


You can veer off into Electrical Engineering territory pretty easily (and I'm no EE), but I'd say it would make sense that for most circuit breakers, their trip points will drop as the ambient temp rises


1609812588584.png


Also, if you have a lot of Arc Fault (AFCI) and Ground Fault (GFCI) breakers, those can generate heat as well.
 
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BrutulTM

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I was a EE in a past life but I can't think of an explanation for this. A good rule of thumb though whenever electrical circuits start acting haunted, it's usually because of a grounding problem. Maybe a loose wire in your neutral or ground bars or something broken in there. There could be something to the temperature thing if you think it's changed in there for some reason. If the breakers themselves are heating up there's probably something wrong with them.
 
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Aychamo BanBan

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I had an issue where a lot of my low voltage electronics were dying randomly and quickly. It turned out when they installed my pool, some electrical line was still hooked up to my panel and somehow it was overloading everything. They disconnected that line and everything worked fine.
 

Erronius

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I was a EE in a past life but I can't think of an explanation for this. A good rule of thumb though whenever electrical circuits start acting haunted, it's usually because of a grounding problem. Maybe a loose wire in your neutral or ground bars or something broken in there. There could be something to the temperature thing if you think it's changed in there for some reason. If the breakers themselves are heating up there's probably something wrong with them.

I think some older circuit breakers were just a bimetallic strip and a 'catch', back in the day. Now a lot of them have both a bimetallic strip and a coil, so the strip will catch the relatively long-duration borderline overload conditions (similar to motor starter 'heater' overloads, I guess) while the coil will react quicker to high current trips that are probably a short-circuit, and the coil will do it faster than the strip ever could.

AFAIK the strip and coil are in series, so I'm guessing the bimetallic strip still being hot might prevent the resetting of the breaker until it cools down.

(I did find this video that shows this)



I just looked at both Cutler Hammer BR and CH series breakers, and they're both thermal-magnetic, so I'd guess most residential/commercial molded case CBs are like this these days.

What I didn't know until I just watched that video, is that breakers that small actually have arc chutes. I'm used to seeing arc chutes on much larger pieces of equipment.
 

Fogel

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The only other thing that is different is a little over a month ago I had an outdoor outlet installed by my well pump because I had to get a water softener and aerator. It was done by an electrical company, but that can still go south. The soonest I can get an electrician over is Monday, and I'm bringing in a different company than the one who did the outside outlet.
 

Aychamo BanBan

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The only other thing that is different is a little over a month ago I had an outdoor outlet installed by my well pump because I had to get a water softener and aerator. It was done by an electrical company, but that can still go south. The soonest I can get an electrician over is Monday, and I'm bringing in a different company than the one who did the outside outlet.

Man, I had an issue when I had my pool installed. There was some circuit that did some landscaping lights that I think never got pulled out. So somehow it was like backfeeding into my panel, and it kept nuking all my low voltage electronics. Amplified woofers, Rokus, Amazon Echos, etc. They had to come out and figure out what was going on, and they found that circuit was somehow overloading things, and they pulled it and everything was fine. It may indeed be that new outlet!! Get a *smart* electrician!
 

Frenzied Wombat

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So hired some painters to do some outdoor siding painting. Came home to them rinsing out their paint buckets in my fucking garden. No, not some patchy area of grass, and no, not the section of half dead grass bordering the street/sidewalk that technically belongs to the city, but like literally in the middle of my rose bushes and shrubs. I just made these fucks use some garden spades to dig up the first few inches of soil and dispose of it, and they're looking at me like I'm some sort of Crazy Karen. Dude acted like I was speaking Alien when I explained that paint doesn't go in flower beds. If my plants die I'm gonna go postal.

What the fuck is wrong with people?
 
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Erronius

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i hate this thread, i don't know wtf it is but just bought an amp meter now anyway!

Homeowners might not need anything like this, but I broke down and bought some of these for my meters at work.

I work in a lot of bad places where having to balance multiple meters on top of shit really sucks, especially when if you knock one off there's a good chance they'll plunge into water (sometimes sewage). I was working underground on some river intake valves a month or two ago, and the vault had a foot of water in it. So of course my clumsy ass knocked a $700-$800 loop calibrator off the ladder and I had to literally pour the water out of it afterwards (amazingly it dried out and works fine now)

It's handy as fuck to just hang your meter somewhere and not have it fall. I'm still not sure why no one at my company buys these. They're almost a must-have in the field

1609989169755.png
 
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BrutulTM

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That's pretty cool. It's always a problem getting the meter where you can see it since you usually have to hold a lead in each hand.
 
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TJT

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When I bought my house in 2016 it had a satellite dish from the previous owner. I didn't fuck with it as it's small and I didn't really care. Today the HOA sent me hatemail. I can pay the "architectural committee" of Karens $1000 to get a permit allowing it or I can be fined $50 a month until I remove it.

This pissed me off. Now I have to go fund a 16 foot ladder to get rid of the stupid thing.
 

Aychamo BanBan

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When I bought my house in 2016 it had a satellite dish from the previous owner. I didn't fuck with it as it's small and I didn't really care. Today the HOA sent me hatemail. I can pay the "architectural committee" of Karens $1000 to get a permit allowing it or I can be fined $50 a month until I remove it.

This pissed me off. Now I have to go fund a 16 foot ladder to get rid of the stupid thing.

Pro-tip: Return the ladder to store for refund after.
 
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Alasliasolonik

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When I bought my house in 2016 it had a satellite dish from the previous owner. I didn't fuck with it as it's small and I didn't really care. Today the HOA sent me hatemail. I can pay the "architectural committee" of Karens $1000 to get a permit allowing it or I can be fined $50 a month until I remove it.

This pissed me off. Now I have to go fund a 16 foot ladder to get rid of the stupid thing.
Call the previous owner if you have his number. Fuck those bitches, Im sure the other dude dealt with them.