Circuit breaker keeps tripping

[Micky]

That's true. I had a fusebox that was on drugs. But it had a good connection.

[bob_villain]

Congrats, you said something amusing...

[bob_villain]

...I would also check. But I think that's a precautionary label...OSHA has you put in covers/escutcheons if you have any openings from removed breakers.

[Scott Lurndal]

I've installed Square-D panels where there twistouts that must not be removed because the busbars to which breakers are attached aren't long enough. Square-D does this so they can offer different SKU's that support fewer or more breakers and use the same twistout panel, enclosure and cover for all of them.

[DerbyDad03]

That makes sense. My curiosity would still cause me to remove the panel. ;-)

[TomR]

Although it is a longshot, if you said at some point that your electrical problem coincided with it raining outside, it is possible that the rain did cause the problem. It seems unlikely, but it is possible.

I once had a problem with a tripped breaker during a heavy rainstorm and when I opened the panel I discovered that there was water dripping inside the panel -- yikes! It was a long saga and I posted a lot about it here at the time.

I turned the main power off and called the utility company. Strangely, they said it is not their problem and they would not come out to look at it. They said I had to call an electrician. In the end, it turned out that water was getting into the meter box on the outside of the house and then was dripping down INSIDE the main feed wire coming from the meter box to the inside panel and it was dripping into the panel box from there. I eventually solved the problem myself by super-sealing the meter box outside so no water could get in. In my case, I could see the water when I took the panel cover off. I forget if you said that you had taken your panel cover off or not.

If your issue was caused by rain (again, unlikely in my opinion, but possible), then maybe when the rain stopped everything dried out and you could then reset the problem breaker.

[TomR]

I just posted elsewhere in this thread about a situation that I once had where water was getting into the meter box on the outside of the house, then ran down INSIDE the feed wire from the meter box to the panel insode the house, and the water dripped into the panel from INSIDe tha feed wire. So, even if the feed wire to the house is underground, it is possible for water to get into the panel box from inisde that feed wire. Again, unlikely, but possible.

[TomR]

If that is a phot of the OP's panel, then it does look like it is full. And, there must be a reason for the tags that say not to remove the twistout at the bottom.

But, it looks like there may be a breaker on the bottom left that says "spare" even though it is set to "ON". So, maybe that is a spare slot.

Or, another option may be to take out a full single breaker and repalce it with a split breaker that creates two circuits from that one panel slot.

[TomR]

By coincidence, today I happened to be at the property that I was referring to in the above scenario about the burned and melted terminals inside the panel that I discovered when one of the breakers could not be reset. I was there today to install an over-the-range microwave with a new dedicated circuit. So, I had an opportunity to open up the panel and I took a couple of photos.

The links below are photos showing some of the burned terminals that I found in the past:

The second one shows a red wire nut on the right where I spliced in a wire to move that circuit down to a new location on a new breaker further down in the panel.

[TomR]

Sorry, the tinypic.com links do not seem to be working. I'll try again later tonight or in the next day or so. I have a hunch that it is the tinypic.com website that is having the problem, so if anyone knows of a better, or easier, and free photo upload site please let me know.

[clare]

That was a fairly common failure mode on the old CH panels. That is an old Cutler Hammer, right??

[clare]

That's what the "drip loop" is there for. Around here if the inspector doesn't find that "drip loop" he is very likely to give you a deficiency report.

[Doug Miller]

Micky wrote in news: [e-mail]:

That's OK, most of them have never heard of you either.

[Doug Miller]

"E. Robinson" wrote in news:n7rq4d$psk$ [e-mail]:

I think you ought to replace it with an arc-fault breaker. If *that* trips, then it's time to find out what's wrong with your wiring.

[TomR]

Good call! I think you are correct about that. The panel says "Challenger" and the old circuit breakers in the panel say "Challenger" on them. But, when I went to an electrical supply place to buy new circuit breakers they said they are Cutler Hammer breakers and that's what I bought and used to replace the old bad breakers.

I didn't know that this panel was known for that problem.

I also just discovered that when I right-click on each of the photos that I posted, it shows an option for me to make the image larger. Then, on the larger image, I can left-click on the image and it gets even large. When I do that, I can read the print on the circuit breakers and also see the burned and melted parts more clearly.

[TomR]

On the property where I had the water-inside-panel problem, there is a drip loop up at the top of what I think maybe is called the mast head (or something like that), where the power line from the pole meets the service drop that goes down into the top of the meter box.

Where it comes out of the bottom of the meter box, there is no drip loop. It just runs down into the building and into the top of the electric panel. I don't know that I have ever seen a drip loop on that part of the service line coming into a building (below the meter), but I never really looked carefully to see if there is a drip loop there. Since the water was coming from inside the meter box (getting in through the top of the meter box), and was running INSIDE the wire going from there to the panel, I don't know if a drip loop in that line would have prevented the problem of water getting into the panel inside the house.

[clare]

If the wire from the meter droops below the conduit exiting the meter box to the inside of the building, water cannot follow the wire into the building and into the panel.

[Micky]

I was kidding. I thought it meant don't remove them until you need to. But you all have convinced me it means something else.

Yes, there are half-wide breakers, if you have no more empty spaces. But you have to buy two.

[clare]

Looks like he is replacing half-wide already

[TomR]

I may be wrong about this, but I think the purpose of a drip loop is to have water that is on the outside of the wire drip off at the low point of the loop rather than running down on the outside of the wire into a structure etc.

But, I think that any water that is INSIDE a conduit will continue to flow inside that conduit down into the drip loop then back up and then down again to the lowest point in the conduit down below. If it were water inside a hose, as new water flowed into the hose at the top of the hose the water inside the hose would continue flowing down to the lowest point further down at the end of the hose. This would be similar to a sink drain and trap -- where the trap is in effect a "drip loop". Similarly, water on the outside of the sink drain would drip off at the bottom of the trap. But water inside the drain line would continue to flow down to the end of the drain line and would continue past the "drip loop"/trap.

In the scenario that I had where water was getting inside the conduit and going into the panel, if the conduit had a drip loop in it, I could have cut a small slit in the conduit wrap at the bottom of the drip loop to let the water inside the conduit drip out there rather than continue down into the panel inside the house in the basement. Of course, that would only have been a temporary fix until I corrected the problem of water getting inside the conduct from the meter box. In my case, there was no such drip loop in that part of the conduit (from the bottom of the meter to the panel below inside the house in the basement).