Is the breaker bad if it doesn't pop?


  #1  
Old 02-16-04, 12:52 PM
Special_K_29
Visiting Guest
Posts: n/a
Question Is the breaker bad if it doesn't pop?

I have a quick question. Over the weekend I installed a new 20amp breaker to handle some outlets in the basement. I guess when I pulled the wires through the conduit one of the black wires got knicked. So needless to say when I turned on the breaker on, boy did I see sparks. However, I don't believe that the SquareD breaker I bought ever popped to "off". Shouldn't it have? When I reached for the breaker and noticed it was still in the "on" position I was somewhat leary to touch it.

Any thoughts?

In the end, I replaced all the wire going to and from that outlet that had the problem. Talk about blackening the conduit.

Kurt
 
  #2  
Old 02-16-04, 12:57 PM
J
Member
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: United States
Posts: 17,733
Upvotes: 0
Received 1 Upvote on 1 Post
You can have a lot of sparks at far less than 20 amps. A regular breaker protects against one thing: overcurrent. That leaves a lot of things that it doesn't protect against. If a breaker protected against every malfunction, we'd only need one electrical code: install a breaker.

I'm not saying that your breaker is good. But your experience does not prove that it is bad.
 
  #3  
Old 02-17-04, 10:20 AM
imjerry
Visiting Guest
Posts: n/a
Square D Breakers

Go to a middle position when tripped and not full off, so to reset you must flip to full off and reset!!! This may or may not be the situation in your case, but one line of Square D breakers have a red indicator flag to show if it is tripped, did you see this or do you have that model ???
 
 

Thread Tools
Search this Thread
 
Ask a Question
Question Title:
Description:
Your question will be posted in: