A couple circuit breaker questions

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Is the razor plugged into isolation tranny? Maybe that is causing the GFCI trip. Tony

[John]

I put in a plain 15a breaker and a GFCI outlet yesterday, which my original post said was my plan all along if you had bothered to read it.

Haven't had a problem since. I guess that mysterious 17a load you insisted had to exist without my knowledge has vanished! Why don't you do likewise?

[Tom Horne]

The reason we won't give you the blessing you are seeking is not in any way based on an expectation that you will understand the danger that you are subjecting your family to but rather to warn other readers of your writing that the practice you advocate is dangerous and can get people killed.

An 1800 watt hair dryer is the entire capacity of a fifteen ampere circuit! Even one sixty watt light bulb would be enough of an additional load to trip the breaker. Even if you are correct about the breaker being defective that does not make it safe to replace it with a twenty ampere breaker. If your assertion is true that it is opening without any load then the proper remedy is to replace it with another fifteen ampere breaker.

You want to believe that what you have done is not hazardous so you will not listen to the basic point. NO MATTER WHAT THE CAUSE OF THE ORIGINAL PROBLEM THE USE OF A TWENTY AMPERE BREAKER ON FOURTEEN GAUGE WIRE IS A FIRE WAITING TO HAPPEN. I'd suggest that you buy your children's cemetery plots now while you still have time to shop around and get a good price. I just hope a fellow firefighter is not killed trying to rescue your family or your self from your obstinance.

-- Tom H

[Michael Burr]

And if you survive the fire you can look forward to your insurance company refusing to pay your claim. Hopefully you can afford to pay all the medical and rebuild your house out of your own pocket.

Michael

[TimS]

Actually, there is a whole more to it than just you can't use a 20A on #14, but.... Why not try swapping what you got? Put the 15 back, move the load to another 15 in the panel, put the other 15 load on the first 15, and try. Eitrher the problem will stay with the load, or it will stay with the breaker. Proof done. Fix the one that is bad.

[John]

Two more morons heard from.

After 15 years of faithful service, my 15a GFCI breaker started tripping for no apparent reason, when the only thing ever used on it was a hair dryer. I wanted to find out if the problem was a faulty breaker or something down the circuit; having already examined every outlet, and replacing two that seemed to have aged poorly without fixing the problem. I replaced the breaker with a 20a GFCI because I happened to have one. The problem went away. I asked if this proved the breaker was the problem?

Morons came out the woodwork and insisted I was about to burn the house down. One moron claimed I had a short that tripped a 15a breaker, but not a

20a breaker. Another moron said, a month later, that a hairdryer that works fine on other 14 gauge circuits is somehow dangerous on this 14 gauge circuit because it has a 20a breaker on it.

Ignoring the morons, and satisfied that the problem was with the old breaker, I replace the temporary one with a new regular 15a breaker, and the first outlet with a GFCI. Haven't had a problem in a month. The short and the dangerous hair dryer seem to have fixed themselves.

Thanks everyone for your help. Couldn't have done it without you.

[John]

It was the only GFCI breaker, so I had nothing to swap it with except the

20a GFCI I had on the shelf. Since the problem could have been a ground fault between the breaker box and the first outlet, I wanted to test it with a GFCI breaker.

Sorry you got dragged into a matter that was solved a month ago.

[Doug Miller]

The real moron here is the guy that still hasn't figured out the difference between an overload and a short -- that is, yourself.

-- Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?

[John]

Gosh, it isn't an overload for the new 15a breaker, or any of the other 15a circuits I tried it on. So, it wasn't an overload; but anyone who read my first post knew that. Do you think it might have been a bad breaker? Do you think at all? You still haven't figured out the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground; but you don't stop babbling.