 |
Articles By Syndicated Columnist
Dan Thomas
© Copyright Home
Improvement Inside And Out
Fuses And Circuit Breakers
Circuit breakers and fuses are
devices built into your home’s electrical system for your safety. Because the
typical
homeowner does not know about wire current-carrying capacity, the fuses or
circuit breakers on the electric panel are there to prevent overloading of a
particular circuit. Without fuses or circuit breakers, if too many appliances
were operating on a single circuit, the cable would get extremely hot; melt and
possible start a fire.
To prevent prolonged electrical overloads fuses are designed to blow and circuit
breakers
are designed to trip. Either device stops the flow of current to the
overloaded cable. For
example, a 15-amp fuse should blow when the current passing through it exceeds
15-amp
s. A fuse that blows or a circuit trips is not necessarily faulty: it is doing
its job properly,
indicating that there is trouble somewhere in the circuit. Either there are too
many devices
plugged in or some malfunctioning device, such as an appliance with an internal
short, is
connected to the circuit.
A blown fuse or a tripped circuit breaker is the signal to look for trouble. A
blown fuse
must be replaced with a new one, while a tripped circuit breaker must
be pushed to "on" to restore the power. Some
circuit breakers flip to
a neutral position and must be turned off before being turned on. It makes no
sense to replace a
blown fuse or to reset a tripped circuit breaker until you
have located and eliminated the cause of the trouble.
CAUTION: Never try to defeat this built-in safety system by replacing
a fuse with one of a larger current-carrying capacity. Likewise replacing a
copper penny behind a blown fuse is sure to lead to disaster.
|
|
|
|
|
