Overloaded

        A friend called the other day about an electrical issue she was having, the power in her living room had gone out and she really needed help getting it working again. She assured me that the problem only affected the one area of her home, the rest of the place was fine.

Since the problem was confined to the living room we began there. The situation occurred while my friend was vacuuming the living room carpet, knowing that a vacuum cleaner was not enough to trigger a loss of power, I decided to ask if any other appliances had been ON at the time of the outage. She said yes. In addition to the vacuum cleaner, there was the television, a cell phone that was charging on the end table, oh and a small portable heater.

One common misconception we tend to have is if an appliance is small, its power usage must also be small, but this isn't always the case. Take for instance, appliances with heating elements and small motors, these units can use up to 60% or more of a circuits power just to operate- regardless of size.

With the list of potential causes now known I asked my friend to find me the electrical specs of each appliance, I needed to check the combined values to see what the overall usage looked like. After reviewing the specs I determined that two of the appliances were likely the cause of the power failure. I had my friend unplug the vacuum cleaner and turn the portable heater OFF, that way both appliances wouldn't interfere with resetting the circuit breaker.

Next, I had my friend head to the Electrical Panel all the while, explaining how to identify a tripped circuit breaker:

(1) Look for the toggle switch of a circuit breaker to be midway between On and Off see circuit #13
(2) If the circuit breaker has an indicator window, it will be red
(3) in some cases the toggle switch will appear to be OFF, so look for the one with the slightest difference and gently wiggle the toggle switch. If there is no tension that will be the tripped circuit breaker.

Once she located the correct toggle switch, I then explained how to reset the circuit breaker:

Push the toggle switch towards the OFF position until it clicks and locks in place. Then push the toggle switch in the opposite direction until it locks to the ON position. Since the toggle switch remained in place my friend went back to the living room and confirmed that the electricity had been restored. I explained that if she wanted to continue vacuuming she needed to keep the portable heater off and never have both appliances running in the same room at the same time.

When most people experience an overload they skip right to the resetting the breaker part, but then when the circuit breaker stops resetting, or starts shutting off periodically, they don't understand why. Resetting a circuit breaker without dealing with the cause first is a short term gain, take the time needed to properly find the cause and minimize the chances of losing the circuit breaker altogether.  

Important Note: When resetting a Circuit Breaker ALWAYS remove the cause of the overload before you reset the device so as not to damage the circuit, devices, or any other equipment. If a circuit breaker does not reset or immediately shuts off after resetting, STOP and DO NOT reset again. Schedule a licensed Electrician to come out and troubleshoot the problem further.

Until next time, stay safe.