15A Cartridge Fuses Keep Blowing When I Change Them

[matt_milligan2]

My fuse box has 3 cartridges of 15A fuses along with the regular glass fuses. The 15A cartridges power the outlets in the kitchen and seem to be interconnected with some of the circuits that operate on the glass fuses. My problem is that when the cartridge fuses blow, I go through

4 or 5 of them before I can get one to work. Typcially they blow as soon as I put them in. Could this be because I did not turn off the power prior to changing them? Should I be using a time delay fust instead ( these are no motors on these circuits, just outlets from the kitchen and garage. Why don't they use glass fuses on all the circuits?

Anyone have any ideas?

[RBM]

You might want to consider replacing the panel with circuit breakers. It sounds like the cartridge fuse circuits are overloaded or have an intermittent short

[sumemailaddress]

Of course you shut off stuff before replacing the fuses. Everything kicks on at once, what do you expect but a blown fuse. Sounds like you are overloaded, add some more circuits. To save money on fuses till you get the job done right, but those screw in circuit breakers. They screw right in the fuse socket, cost about $10 or less.

[dpb]

And, in reinforcement of what another poster said, just to make certain--

Turn off the _loads_ on the circuits, not just the power to the circuit panel. The problem is that apparently the circuits are so near capacity that the surge is blowing them.

Also as noted elsewhere, it does sound as though you are really in need of upgrading these circuits or adding additional or balancing loads from these to others that aren't so heavily loaded...one would expect to go years between blowing a fuse on a normally loaded circuit so if this is happening relatively frequently, it's a message.