The Circuit Breakers in Your Home: A Safety Guide

One sure indication that you have an electrical overload situation is when a circuit breaker trips when you turn-on a light or some other appliance. Circuit breaker panels are located in the garage, the basement, or the utility room, so just finding the tripped breaker can be a hassle.

Unless you can identify the reasons for the circuit breaker to trip, it's bound to happen again. Circuit breakers are electrical safety devices and by tripping, or breaking the circuit, it is working as designed: protecting lives and property.

Building codes require that circuit breaker and fuse panels be located immediately after the point where electrical power enters a building. The number of circuit breakers inside an electrical panel can vary according to the number of electrical circuits in the building. The dimensions and the current rating of circuit breakers is matched to the design and purpose of individual electrical circuits.

In newer construction, Ground Fault Interrupter Circuit, or GFI, circuit breakers can be found along with the older trip-and-reset type breakers. GFI breakers are used to protect kitchen and bathroom circuits from sudden electrical shorts if an appliance accidentally shorts out. The municipal building code enforcement office will have more know-how on the requirement for installing GFIC breakers in your home.

Circuit breakers are constructed to use only a few parts to quickly sever electrical current that exceeds safety levels. The working parts of a circuit breaker are a spring, a set of contacts and a bi-metallic strip. The bi-metal strip will hold the contacts together as long as the flow of electrical current remains within safe levels. As long as the current flow remains at or below the breaker's rated current level, the strip won't bend and the contacts remain together.

The circuit breaker's contacts are disconnected just when the bi-metallic strip becomes overheated as a result of dangerous levels of electrical current flow. With the flow of current now stopped, the metallic strip cools down and reverts to its basic shape.