<br>
<br>A breaker that trips is not a broken breaker. It is a breaker doing its job. The device sits in the panel watching how much current flows through a circuit, and when that current climbs past what the wire behind it can carry safely, it opens and stops the flow. Without that, the wire heats up inside the wall and the insulation begins to fail.
<br>
<br>There are three common reasons a breaker opens.
<br>
<br>The first is a simple overload. Too many things drawing power on one circuit at the same time. A space heater plugged in on the same run as a microwave will do it in most homes. The fix is usually to move one of the loads somewhere else, not to replace the breaker.
<br>
<br>The second is a short circuit. A hot conductor touching a neutral or a ground somewhere in the run. This produces a very large current very quickly and the breaker opens almost instantly. A short is not something to reset and forget. It means something in the wiring or in an appliance has failed.
<br>
<br>The third is a ground fault, where current escapes the intended path and finds another route to ground. On circuits protected by a ground fault device, this trips the protection rather than the breaker itself.
<br>
<br>The pattern of the tripping tells you a lot. A breaker that opens only when a particular appliance runs points at that appliance. A breaker that opens at random with nothing obvious running points at the wiring. A breaker that trips the moment you reset it, with everything unplugged, points at a fault in the circuit itself and should not be reset repeatedly.
<br>
<br>One thing worth knowing is that breakers wear out. A breaker that has tripped hundreds of times over many years can begin to trip at lower and lower currents. If a circuit that never gave trouble starts opening under normal load, and nothing about the load has changed, the breaker itself may simply be tired.
<br>
<br>Resetting is straightforward. Push the handle fully to off first, then back to on. Halfway does not reset the mechanism. If it will not stay on, stop and get the circuit looked at rather than forcing it.
<br>
<br>Further reading: see the full post on Loadgames
<br>
