Circuit breaker
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Circuit breakers are rated to protect the attached wiring from overload; all conductors have a maximum ampacity for safe operation. Most branch circuits (those fed by a circuit breaker) have many outlets allowing you to easily connect more load than is safe for the conductor, hence the need for a breaker. It's fairly easy to check your load, as all appliances have a label that indicates how many amps are required for operation. Add up the labels and see how the total compares to rating of the breaker. What will skew the calculation are inductive devices (motors, compressors, etc) and resistance heating units. Motors can, at startup, draw up to 6 times the rated current in order to spin up the rotor. Heaters will draw full load until they stabilize at close to the target temperature. Both can cause the breaker to trip. If you determine that you have more load connected than the circuit breaker can handle - a good rule of thumb is to connect no more than 80% of rating - remove some load by shifting items to another circuit. DO NOT increase the size of the breaker! You risk a fire inside the walls from overheated conductors that way. If the problem is determined to be brief overloads, such as those caused by motor startup, there is little risk to the wiring and there are slow-blow type circuit breakers available. Only an electrician can safely determine if this is appropriate for your individual case; the time-current curves take some training to evaluate properly. It's also possible that the breaker itself is faulty. Sometimes they become weak and trip at less than rated load. You might try buying a new breaker of the same type and rating and replacing it. If you're as uncomfortable with electricity as your post implies, I'd leave that to an electrician, too. Good luck.:-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Hello Roger, I was hoping you'd reply. Last night we noticed the oil column heater was not very hot at all (I could press my palm against the fins after it had been on for an hour or so). My girl friend plugged her laptop into the same power board as the heater and it tripped the surge protector on the power board again. Im going to buy us a new heater today and see if that fixes the problem.
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Josh, I have a Welsh mate that lives around the corner and just happens to be an electrician. If you don't already have it sorted I reckon we could pop over on the weekend and he could diagnose it for. It would probably cost you a few beers.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004
Welsh eh? Im going to buy a new heater today as I think that's the cause as the other one seems to have packed up. If that doesnt fix it I might take you up on your offer. Is he ok with cold beer though? :) How bloody cold is it? We had a roofer out this morning to replace some flashing and he said its the first time in 10 years he's seen ice on a roof in Sydney.
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I don't know if this applies in Aus, but in the UK we have several companies that offer unlimited call outs for home problems (boilers/gas/plumbing/electrics etc) for a small fixed monthly fee. When our boiler started playing intermittently up a while back, we signed up to one of these companies, they came out and did an initial inspection and said everything was fine, and low and behold about 6 weeks later our boiler packed up and they fixed it FOC. Have you considered this, it would save paying for someone to come have a look and possibly not even find anything, as in our case the initial inspection was free too. Simon
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Hello Roger, I was hoping you'd reply. Last night we noticed the oil column heater was not very hot at all (I could press my palm against the fins after it had been on for an hour or so). My girl friend plugged her laptop into the same power board as the heater and it tripped the surge protector on the power board again. Im going to buy us a new heater today and see if that fixes the problem.
An hour should be plenty of soak time for an oil heater. You're probably on the right track. Shorted windings in the heating coil can cause it to draw excess current, yet not get the oil hot enough to be useful.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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The switch board for our house has 2 circuits for power points. The circuit breaker for one of these "tripped" a couple of weeks ago. I turned it back on and everything was fine until it tripped again about a week later (the new dishwasher is connected to this circuit and was running both times but we have used it everyday). I spent a few hours stuffing around last weekend attempting to determine if it was a particular appliance or combination of appliances causing it but couldn’t make it happen again. We have a tv, dvd player and electric oil column heater plugged into a power board on this circuit and the surge protector in the power board tripped this morning while we had the tv and heater on. I dont have a clue when it comes to electricity but I suspect the heater is causing it. Interestingly the safety switch in the switch board that covers both power point circuits and the lights did not trip. I guess we can * Get a new heater and see if that fixes it (expensive) * Have an electrician out to investigate (again expensive and there is a good chance we'll be ripped off) * Put up with it (makes me a bit nervous) Any advice would be much appreciated
If the heater is still working it probably isn't the problem. I think you probably need to understand just a little about circuit loading. In Aus we have 240V and each power point has a 10A limit. This doesn't mean that you can draw 10A from each power point. In your house the power points are grouped together into circuits and each circuit typically has a 15A circuit breaker attached (in the old days we had fuses). The reason for this is to prevent large currents flowing through the wiring that may cause local heating and potentially cause fires. Now a good heater may well be 2400W, meaning it draws 10A (power = volts x current), so if you put in on a power board with anything else you will likely trip the 10A current limit on the power board - this does not indicate a problem with the heater. I have a rule in my house that heaters ARE NEVER connected to power boards. For example, if you have two 2400W heaters on the one circuit you will probably trip the breaker, even though they have separate power points and each draws only 10A from each power point. In your case, it sounds like you had the heater on the same circuit that supplies points in the kitchen. So possible scenarios, heater on, drawing 10A, dishwasher comes on and tries to heat water say 5A, someone turns on the electric jug - another 5-10A and bingo! The microwave is another potential 4A etc. The stove should be on a separate circuit. In my house the problem is that one room we use a radiator in is on the same circuit as the laundry, and if the drier is on, turning the heater on trips the breaker and the heater and TV cut out. The kids have learnt to live with it. What can you do about it? Try to find a separate circuit for the heater - if you trip the circuit that failed before you can find power points on other circutis by seeing which power points still operate. Try putting the heater on one of these. By the way, I'm in Cheltenham and my little wall air conditioner has just frozen up again! I'm just about to hit it with the hair drier to thaw it out! -- modified at 19:15 Monday 16th July, 2007
Peter "Until the invention of the computer, the machine gun was the device that enabled humans to make the most mistakes in the smallest amount of time."
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If the heater is still working it probably isn't the problem. I think you probably need to understand just a little about circuit loading. In Aus we have 240V and each power point has a 10A limit. This doesn't mean that you can draw 10A from each power point. In your house the power points are grouped together into circuits and each circuit typically has a 15A circuit breaker attached (in the old days we had fuses). The reason for this is to prevent large currents flowing through the wiring that may cause local heating and potentially cause fires. Now a good heater may well be 2400W, meaning it draws 10A (power = volts x current), so if you put in on a power board with anything else you will likely trip the 10A current limit on the power board - this does not indicate a problem with the heater. I have a rule in my house that heaters ARE NEVER connected to power boards. For example, if you have two 2400W heaters on the one circuit you will probably trip the breaker, even though they have separate power points and each draws only 10A from each power point. In your case, it sounds like you had the heater on the same circuit that supplies points in the kitchen. So possible scenarios, heater on, drawing 10A, dishwasher comes on and tries to heat water say 5A, someone turns on the electric jug - another 5-10A and bingo! The microwave is another potential 4A etc. The stove should be on a separate circuit. In my house the problem is that one room we use a radiator in is on the same circuit as the laundry, and if the drier is on, turning the heater on trips the breaker and the heater and TV cut out. The kids have learnt to live with it. What can you do about it? Try to find a separate circuit for the heater - if you trip the circuit that failed before you can find power points on other circutis by seeing which power points still operate. Try putting the heater on one of these. By the way, I'm in Cheltenham and my little wall air conditioner has just frozen up again! I'm just about to hit it with the hair drier to thaw it out! -- modified at 19:15 Monday 16th July, 2007
Peter "Until the invention of the computer, the machine gun was the device that enabled humans to make the most mistakes in the smallest amount of time."
The heater appears to have died so I think we'll start by replacing that and see what happens. The house used to have electric hot water but its been replaced with gas so there is a spare unused curcuit. Perhaps we can split the problematic power point circuit into two.
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Welsh eh? Im going to buy a new heater today as I think that's the cause as the other one seems to have packed up. If that doesnt fix it I might take you up on your offer. Is he ok with cold beer though? :) How bloody cold is it? We had a roofer out this morning to replace some flashing and he said its the first time in 10 years he's seen ice on a roof in Sydney.
coldest morning for 20 years apparently! Was -1.3 walking to the train in canterbury this morning, and well less than that when I arrived at parramatta...
I have no blog...
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sorry for the delay it was $40 for parts, and $150 for callout (it was a Saturday), and labour, about an hour 'g'
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sorry for the delay it was $40 for parts, and $150 for callout (it was a Saturday), and labour, about an hour 'g'
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Welsh eh? Im going to buy a new heater today as I think that's the cause as the other one seems to have packed up. If that doesnt fix it I might take you up on your offer. Is he ok with cold beer though? :) How bloody cold is it? We had a roofer out this morning to replace some flashing and he said its the first time in 10 years he's seen ice on a roof in Sydney.
Josh Gray wrote:
Welsh eh? Im going to buy a new heater today as I think that's the cause as the other one seems to have packed up. If that doesnt fix it I might take you up on your offer. Is he ok with cold beer though? :)
We were drinking it from the freezer last weekend complete with icicles at the top of the beer.
Josh Gray wrote:
How bloody cold is it? We had a roofer out this morning to replace some flashing and he said its the first time in 10 years he's seen ice on a roof in Sydney.
No didfferent than it has been since I was a kid. I grew up in the Hawkesbury and it always went negative over night during winter. I had to cath the train at 06:22 from Windsor to make to work at Wynyard by 08:00. The train was an old diesel with doors and windows that didn't close properly. Had to buy myself a Great Coat from the Army disposal store just to make it into work functional.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash 24/04/2004