electrical breaker comparison

[badgolferman]

Is there a site which compares 100 Amp electrical breakers like GE or Square D? Which would you buy and why?

[AutoTracer]

I don't know if there is a difference in the breakers themselves (wrt. quality reliability etc) but there are differences in price and size.

I have been shopping for a new panel and I see that the offerings from the various vendors vary a little in terms of the size of the boxes and how many slots are offered.

For me its going to be a combination of size, spec and are they going to be around in 20 years when someone needs to upgrade a breaker to a new type (case in point, I cannot get AFCI or GFCI replacements for Zinsco panel I have)

[SQLit]

If your talking about buying a new residential service, There are some things you need to know BEFORE you choose a vendor. Like what is the power company going to require to be installed. Some places where I live you have to use 22k AIC breakers, standard is 10K. Yep the 22's are more money, and so are the panels.

I have used almost every manufacture that has produced breakers for the last

50 years. Including a few that are went out of business.

Buy what ever is the least expensive in your area. Residential stuff is about the same in quality and usually pretty close in price as well.

I would suggest that you get a panel big enough to have full sized breakers, ( sometimes considered 1" width) The twins and thin breakers can have problems in hot environments.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

There's more than one kind of Square-D. At one store I was told that the Square-D HomeLine series are cheap crap to compete with some of the other cheap brands and that Square-D should be ashamed to put their name on the HomeLine series. The QO series are a different story.

Our current home has Cutler-Hammer CH series breakers.

Perce

On 06/06/05 01:22 pm badgolferman tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup: