Circuit Breaker Indication In A House Service Box Question

Apr 08, 2008 4 Replies

Hello:



Is it possible that when a circuit breaker in a service box opens due to a short in the circuit that it is controlling, that the lever does not (also) move to the other position ?



e.g., that there might not be any visible indication that it has tripped ?



If so, is this fairly common with circuit breakers in a house service box ? Likely ?



Why ?



Thanks, Bob


most move to a mid position betweeen off and on, although i have seen trips where theres no visible indication and one mmust turn each one off then on. the tripped one will feel different

If you have a dead circuit, but the circuit breaker is still on, I would check any GFI outlets and see if they tripped. It's possible they could be feeding other circuits downstream.

It all depends upon the mfr and the age of the device. Some ancient ones were designed in a way that the handle doesn't move to a "Tripped" position.

Some move all the way to Off; some to a center position.

Some must be moved to the full Off position before they can be reset to On.

Jim

I recall once having breakers which moved the handlle slightly past the ON position when tripped. You had to push the handle pretty hard to the OFF side to reset it, then throw the handle back to ON. Gave me some trouble until I figured it out.

Don Young

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