Of course without having to do any work. :D Last night I got called to a guys college house where dryer heat and oven did not work. They have old fashion 100 amp fuse panel box that has 2 x100 BREAKER at the top of it. But then everything else beneath it is fused. First inline is a long horizontal rectangular black plastic plug in buss fuse holder with a 40a buss fuse on each far end, marked "range". (If you take these out and reverse them they say OFF on the side, and ON if they are in the right way.) Then beneath that are a couple smaller push in buss fuse holders for dryer and water heater. Then beneath that are about 8 screw in single fuses. Here is what they did: Since there are no extra buss bar terminals on this particular panel box (unlike the old fashion 50- 60 amp panel boxes that had them down at the bottom), what someone decided to do - since the dryer buss fuse holder was ripped out by the roots -was to not only hook up the range wire to the rectangular 40A buss terminals, but ALSO the 10 gauge dryer wires that then go to one of those 2-fuse throw-switch boxes where they have 30a fuses inside. Trouble is, when they run the oven and the dryer at the same time, all the juice is going through only the 2 x 40A buss fuses. So I looked at the range wire and looked to see what the gauge wire is. I can't find any good writing on it, anywhere. It has that 6 gauge LOOK. BUT, I can't even remember anymore what 8 gauge wire looks like -if it is usually the mulitple strands, like 6 gauge is, or if it is more like 10 gauge solid wire. The range wire hooked up is that flat gray fabric stuff where the edges curve. You all know the stuff. So what I did was measure the sheathing = EXACTLY 3/4 x 7/16ths. I can see like 5 or 6 strands (there may be more, but that is what I see) of aluminum color wire with the 10 gauge ontop of it, under the terminal screw. So what do you think it is? IF it is 6 gauge, then I could change the 2 x 40 buss fuses to 50's, I'd think. Even though the short amount of 10 gauge wire inside the fuse box going into the throw switch box would be greatly underprotected. But what could burn that wire if the wire between dryer and throw switch box is 30A fuse protected? BTW -think this set up has been like this for years, and oddly this is the first time I have been called to this house, for blowing of the 40A buss fuse, to my surprise, actually. And secondly, it was late and I never really gave it a thought if trying to replace that missing 2 x 30A buss fuse holder is doable, if I can find one. Obviously, that be the way to go back to unless there is damage to where the wires for it hook up. It looked damaged in that area, but I suppose I should go back and look again. Last night my focus was on rectrifying the existing problem.

So I have a 20amp circuit in my garage that I wired up last year. The first and second receptacles are GFCI ( I know better now - only needed one to start). Today, I went out to play in the shop and went to turn on the radio plugged into the SECOND GFCI - no power, I noticed that the FIRST receptacle had tripped. So I reset the first with no problem, but then went to reset the second - and it tripped the breaker on the first receptacle again. Its back and forth now. Could I have bad GFCI's? I'm inclined just to replace the second with a std 20a receptacle. I've doubled checked my wiring; From sub-panel to LINE side on the first receptacle. Second wire from LOAD side of first receptacle to LINE side of second, and so on to other receptacles. Thoughts? Advice?