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Before You Attempt Circuit Breaker Replacement
Ask any electrician about replacing circuit breakers and the first piece of advice you will get is to turn off the mains before you start working. This is a vital step to avoid electrocution injury, but there is still an electrical hazard in the panel itself because the wires going to the mains still carries current. Your hot bus bar may also have current, and you will need to be especially careful if you have never opened the circuit breaker panel before.
Before attempting any circuit breaker replacement, ask yourself how you will accomplish the job with all the lights out. Some people believe a flashlight will do the trick, but it is very important to have a steady light source such as a battery powered lamp or "electric lantern" that you don't need to hold. You need to be able to clearly see the potential danger spots in your electric panel at all times. Accidentally touching the live wires from the power company can cause a fatal shock. Being able to see and avoid them at all times is crucial. Do not attempt to install new breakers unless you can clearly see all parts of the panel and use both hands to do the work.
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What is a Circuit Breaker?
It's easy to confuse a circuit breaker with a fuse. Fuses are most commonly found in older buildings and can be tripped only once. They cannot be reset. A fuse has no reset switch, you must pull it out and install a replacement. A circuit breaker has an on and off switch and is made to be used again and again. Simply reset the switch when the breaker is tripped.
Circuit breakers should not be confused with the breaker box where they can be accessed. When the power goes out in the home and you need to reset the breakers, you may need to go into the basement or to the appropriate place in the home where the breaker box is located, open the box and find the tripped switch. You may have several breaker boxes in the home if there are sub panels installed. If you don't find a tripped breaker in the main box, you may need to investigate the sub panel installed next to the main box or elsewhere in the home.
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Should I Purchase Reconditioned Circuit Breakers?
For some buyers, nothing short of brand new will do. Fortunately, used circuit breakers which have been reconditioned and re-certified work just as well as off-the-shelf models. For owners who need obsolete circuit breakers, there may not be much choice but to use reconditioned breakers depending on the age of the breaker box and the required parts. If your make and model number are no longer manufactured, you may find it on the shelves as a brand new item, but when supplies are gone, reconditioned breakers are the only items that will be available. It may take some getting used to, but many learn through necessity what bargain-hunters already know; used circuit breakers may be the only thing standing in the way of a complete upgrade of your electrical panel or breaker box.
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Learning How to Change A Circuit Breaker
When learning how to change circuit breakers, you will discover that your circuit breaker panel has something called the hot bus bars. These bars are fed by the heavy black wires coming into the box from the electric company. When changing a circuit breaker, you may need to replace a single-pole circuit breaker or a double pole breaker. A single pole breaker sends 120-volt current to a circuit, where a double pole circuit breaker handles 240 volts. Single pole breakers connect to a single hot bus bar, double pole breakers connect to both hot bus bars.
Changing the breaker is different than installing a new one--new breakers require installation of the wire first, attaching the ground wire to the breaker box ground, and the hot wire to the breaker box's hot bus. When replacing the circuit breaker, this work has already been done and the only thing you need to do is to attach the wire to the circuit breaker. Never change circuit breakers with the power on. Always kill the main power and never touch the big black wires that go to the mains. They are always live.
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What Are Used Circuit Breakers Good For?
Because there is a demand for used circuit breakers, many companies offer store credit or cash deals for your used circuit breakers. The best of these deals are for used circuit breakers in large numbers, but check with your customer service rep before deciding what to do with any breakers you have; you may discover that your old circuit breakers are worth more than you know.
Different types of circuit breakers require different handling. The typical consumer grade used circuit breaker may simply be reconditioned and factory certified if circumstances permit. Others may be dismantled and the salvageable components reused. Some breakers require special handling because of the materials used inside them. A gas-insulated circuit breaker or silica-filled breaker for industrial purposes may be governed under environmental protection laws, so recycling and reutilization of these breakers must be done with care.
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What Tools Do I Need to Add a Circuit Breaker?
Once you decide to learn how to add a circuit breaker, you'll need to buy a few tools to do the job if you don't have them already. If you need to add a circuit breaker to your breaker box, you will need at least one additional tool you don't have to use if you're just replacing the breaker. Once you have shut the mains off, you will need a pair of pliers to remove a punch-out panel from your circuit breaker box if there is one. The panels are flimsy and may be removable by hand, but you risk cutting your hands on the metal. A pair of needle-nose pliers is better. It's also good to have a volt meter to make sure power is truly off and there is no voltage in the electrical panel. Do not attempt the replacement or addition if power is present.
Pull out the old circuit breaker with your hands, no special tool is needed for this step. You will also need a screwdriver to attach the hot wire to the breaker. A wire stripper/crimper is also handy if you need to cut away some of the excess insulation to make the proper connection. Don't forget to properly tighten the screw down on the wire once it is in place; a loose connection can cause electrical problems later.
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What is a Wall Socket Tester?
If you have repeated problems with tripping circuit breakers, it's easy to blame the breakers, but you may have defective appliances or wiring problems in a wall socket. You can troubleshoot the wall sockets on a particular circuit using a wall socket tester, a device which plugs into the socket to indicate whether there is a fault, no power to the socket at all or if the outlet is working perfectly. If the wall socket is fine, you may be able to move on to testing a circuit breaker next.
Searching on the Internet for these devices will turn up plenty of items for use in England, but finding these devices for use in America may be trickier. The good news is that you can use a multimeter to do the same thing but setting the meter to AC volts, in the 200 volt range. Do not put your multimeter on "current". If you do not know how to use a multimeter properly, it's best not to attempt to troubleshoot a wall socket until you have read the instructions carefully.
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What is a Continuity Tester?
If you need to learn how to test a circuit breaker, there are important tools you can purchase to make the process much easier. When troubleshooting a circuit breaker problem, you may have a faulty device running on the circuit, or a bad circuit breaker. It all depends on the nature of the problem. Do you need to see if a device is attached to a particular circuit is faulty? A continuity tester is a simple device you can buy to help determine if a circuit can carry electricity.
Use the "live" probe on the "live" prong power cord and the ground probe on the ground part of the plug to see if it is able to carry current. The tester will respond positively (with a light or buzz depending on the model) if it is functioning properly. A multimeter is a more sophisticated tool you can use to test a circuit breaker. By putting the multimeter in "volts AC" mode and touching the hot prong to the breaker's screw you can see if the breaker has power. If there is no power, you need to replace that circuit breaker.
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