Excercise Circuit Breakers

[HayZee518]

The household circuit breaker is the single most forgotten important device in your house! When called upon to "trip" many of them don't! They are located in a dusty panelboard, maybe covered with spider webs, water leaks inside, rivets rusty etc. Take the time to excercise your breakers at least once a year. Physically move the handle to the "OFF" position and then back to "ON". Yes, this includes the "MAIN" breaker. Circuit breakers are manufactured with the trait of being able to interrupt current within 3 cycles of an overload. If they don't trip they are useless and may contribute to an electrical fire. FEDERAL PACIFIC type breakers are reknowned for this. You may notice that these type breakers physically "fall" out of their panelboards when the escutcheon plate is removed. So do yourself a favor and move those handles once in a while. If they won't reset get a new one, if they feel very sloppy, get a new one.

[mrcaptainbob]

breakers...

My Dad was a fire marshall and was ADAMANT about doing that. Thanks for the reminder, HayZee...

[LazyPup]

At my house all the breakers seem to exercise themselves about once a week...LOL

[HayZee518]

I'm serious about this! Once the panelboard is installed, we all forget about it, unless a breaker trips and then we reset only the one that tripped. What about it's "buddies?" Move that handle to the OFF position and then back to ON. Sure you may have to reset a digital clock or something else, but at least you know the thing will actually work when it needs to.

[dkpbxman]

Sounds like a very good idea but...

I'm just worried about temporarily interrupting the flow of juice to my boiler, water softener, refrigerator, etc... Anything that "needs" to be constantly kept on. Might it cause problems or is a very short break OK?

[HayZee518]

For the refrigerator line, shut it off and wait about a minute for the compressor to "pump down" then back on, the boiler, just go off and then back on, the protective relaying will cycle the pump and burner, water softener shouldn't be a problem - I still don't know how them dang things work. Is it based on an ion exchange between the brine and input water?

[dkpbxman]

From Wikipedia

"Ion exchange is a process for water purification in which ions are exchanged between a solution and an ion exchanger, a non-aqueous solid or gel. Typical ion exchangers are ion exchange resins, zeolite, montmorillonite, clay, and humus. Ion exchangers are either cation exchangers for positively charged cations or anion exchangers for negatively charged anions. There are also exchangers called mixed beds which have anion and cation exchanging resins within them. Ion exchange is a reversible process and the ion exchanger can be regenerated or loaded by washing with an excess of the ions to be exchanged.

Ion exchange is a method widely used in household and industrial water purifications to produce soft water. This is accomplished by exchanging calcium Ca2+ and magnesium Mg2+ cations against sodium Na+ or hydrogen H+ cations."



The softener has seriously improved the taste of my water, the smell of my clothes after washing, the feel of my hair after showering and when I saw some of the deposits that had collected on various plumbing fixtures, I almost got sick.
I realize the body's natural defenses will combat any deposits but why chance it?

[Meffy]

Yesterday I gave all the breakers in my (Federal Pacific) panel an exercise. One didn't seem to flip quite all the way to the "off" position but it interrupted power fine. I'll keep an eye on that one and replace it pretty soon if I feel it's too sticky.

[HayZee518]

MEFFY - Please be careful with federal pacific! Unless the company has come up with a foolproof way of keeping the breakers in the panel - don't remove the cover unless to have to! You see the stabs on the breaker are made of copper. A full sized breaker has three tabs that stick out. They fit into a hole that looks like an E. Half sized breakers are only one half of the E. Also breakers are supposed to trip out within three cycles of an obvious overload. I worked for a utility in Western Mass and we had a test instrument for circuit breakers. Simple 15 amp FPE breakers did not trip within three cycles. It took about five minutes for the 15 amp to trip. Current going through it was 95 amps and boy was the breaker HOT! Similarly an 800 amp FPE in a U-Haul store in Mass started to fry when it developed an inter phase short AND IT STILL DIDN'T TRIP! Just be careful!

[Meffy]

Yuppers, the house inspector warned me about Federal Pacific panels. Eventually we'd like to have a transfer switch installed for our portable generator (5550 watts). If we do that, it'd be an opportune time to replace the panel with something less trouble-prone too. But that's a fair chunk of change and we're going to be strapped for cash for some time to come. Ah well.

[ElectricGuy]

Breakers

Flipping your breakers on and off is a good idea, don't forget to trip and GFCI breakers, or recepticals each month too.