Are you anxious to know what causes a breaker to trip? Perhaps, you even want to understand how to stop circuit breaker from tripping. Whatever the reason may be, knowing how to fix a breaker4 that keeps tripping is an important skill for homeowners.
If your circuit breaker keeps tripping, then reading this article may be in the best of your interests, as breakers that keep tripping are dangerous if left unchecked.
Here, I will teach you how to prevent circuit breaker from tripping. You can prevent tripping by ensuring the integrity of the entire circuitry and the breaker itself.
It’s important to realize that there are several factors that make your breakers trip, namely, circuit shorting, overcurrent running, ground faulting, or a defective circuit breaker.
Table of Contents
Tool You Need to Prevent Breakers from Tripping
The tools that I’ll outline below are important in fixing and ensuring your circuit breaker won’t trip that often.
For this task, you’ll need the following:
- Digital Multimeter
- Electric Safety Gloves
However, in case you have found a faulty breaker that constantly trips, you’d just want to improve your home’s overall safety, then you’ll need the following too:
- Ground-fault circuit interrupter outlet
- A brand-new Breaker
A Step-by-Step Guide to Prevent Circuit Breaker from Tripping
I’ve provided a short guide in order to ensure that your breaker won’t incessantly trip fully. It’s important to note that the guide I’ve outlined below is systematically designed so that you can effectively prevent your circuit breaker from tripping.
Step 1. Check all plugged electronics in your circuit
It’s best to check and know the total electric consumption of all electronics in a certain circuit. This is because the leading cause of tripped breakers is due to overloaded circuits.
In line with this, it’s important to calculate the total electrical load of your electronics to determine whether your circuit is overloaded or not.
In most cases, undertaking this step alone fixes most of the circuit breaker tripping issues. However, if this step does nothing to help you with your situation, then proceed to the other steps written below.
Step 2. Inspect Wires that Input Electricity
Aside from the electronics themselves, you should also see if your input wires are still in good condition. Busted input wires can cause short circuits, which is why a circuit breaker tripped. In addition, make sure there’s no ground fault, which occurs when a ground wire and a hot wire touch.
However, you should contact professional electricians for this type of project. They are the ones most capable and well-equipped to handle such input wire inspections.
Step 3. Conduct a Circuit Breaker Reset
If the steps above still don’t fix your breaker tripping issue, then maybe it’s time to conduct a circuit breaker reset.
Now, to reset a breaker, merely locate the panel and find the exact breaker that always trips. Simply turn off the said breaker, and aptly turn it on again to conduct a reset.
If the breaker trips again, then maybe it’s time to proceed to the next step. You can also test the breaker with your multimeter; if you see no voltage reading, the breaker needs replacement.
Step 4. Replace the Tripping Circuit Breaker
If all else fails, then maybe it’s time to replace the tripping breaker. A constantly tripping breaker without any apparent electrical issues signifies that it’s faulty and already needs replacement.
However, please carefully note that the new breaker you’ll install must be compatible with your own panel.
In this regard, I recommend that the breaker you’ll buy is from the same electrical company that made your panel so that you won’t have any issues in replacing the faulty circuit breaker.
Now, though there are multiple do-it-yourself breaker replacement guides available on the internet, I nevertheless implore that you instead hire an electrician if you’re not knowledgeable about circuitry.
Conclusion
How to prevent circuit breaker from tripping — this is a central question for every homeowner. Evidently, each and every one of us wants to be as safe as possible from every possible accident — electric mishaps included.
In this regard, I curated this handy guide to help you manage your home’s safety by ensuring that your breakers don’t incessantly trip.
Have you learned anything from this article? Perhaps you want to share some of your insights with our other readers. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop them down in the comment section.
I am Andrew Wright. With 8 years of experience designing, installing, and maintaining electrical power systems. I love my job, and I have always wanted to offer others the necessary help so they can take care of their houses.