Dumb paging Dumber; Dumb paging Dumber

[pulltostart]

The text says it all...

 

Gulfport, MS

 

lawrence

http://gulfport.craigslist.org/app/5984091000.html

 

[turquoisedude]

See now that's why they stopped putting glass fuse panels in houses... pennies from heaven, anyone?

 

[vacerator]

Our kids

bought a house with breakers, and the circuit the microwave is on keeps tripping if it runs for more than two minutes.
An electrician can't find the source of the extra draw.

 

[goatfarmer]

Only $150.00? Gotta be worth twice that!

 

[ovrphil]

Yeah those stickers alone are worth 50 bucks or mores! ;^?

 

[tolivac]

No,its not a fridge---but a breaker and fuse tester.Do other appliances plugged into the same circuit trip the breaker??Seller-GET THAT FRIDGE FIXED!MAYBE-then someone will buy it.

 

[circlew]

Sometimes breakers get weak, and won't hold their rated load; some brands are worse for this. I had this problem with the kitchen circuit that my MW oven was connected to. It would also do it with the toaster or waffle iron. No problems if using mixer or blender, just high wattage items. The breaker was FPE, known for poor quality. That panel has been removed. Another panel is Cutler-Hammer CH style, and no problems with it. All the new panels in the house are Eaton CH type, which I believe to be the best made. Square D type QO is also good.

 

[combo52]

MW Oven Trips Breaker After Two Minutes

Hi Tim if the electrician can't solve a simple problem like this I would not want him working on my house, it is either a bad CB of microwave oven, he should put an amp meter on the circuit and see which is the cause.

 

[tolivac]

Possible cause-are the leads going to the suspect breaker TIGHT!!!If they are loose this may cause heating and a thermal beaker can trip from this.I have had FPE breakers in one house and one apartment-no problems with them.Only times I have had breaker problems are in commercial use and in transmitters.I had to replace a 100A 3ph breaker in a transmitter that was running on 208V-the 100Areaker was fine if the transmitter was running from 220-230V 3ph.Under the transmitter manufactuers recommendations had to replace the 100A breaker with a 125A one.The 100A breaker was running at 95A-more than the 80% load.125A breaker was fine.Fuses and breakers should only run at 80% of the rating.like if you are using a 15A breaker-run a 13A load on it.20A-18A and so on.We have had breakers in transmitters here fail-often they get either less sensitive or too sensitive.Fortunately large breakers-200A or bigger can be rebuilt.Westinghouse-Seimens.For the stored energy-remote trip breakers where I work-the trip relay needs to be readjusted for the proper trip value.

 

[circlew]

The most common problems with FPE breakers is NOT that they don't hold the rated load, but rather that they will fail to trip on overload or short circuit. Therfore, in most cases, they will appear to be working fine until they are needed, and then fail - sometimes with disasterous results.

Another problem I experienced was that one time when I attempted to turn off the main breaker to add a circuit, the breaker didn't shut off the power to one of the hot sides of the service, even though the handle was down. I pushed the handle back to on, then back to off. That time it disconnected all power as it should. Such a scenario would not have been good if I needed to shut off the power quickly due to some type of emergency. I also noticed the breakers seemed to fit rather loosely on the busbar.

My sister lived in a mobile home with an FPE panel, and I remember her mentioning problems with flickering lights on a couple circuits.

I have to say I enjoyed tearing my old panel out, good riddance of a bad product!

http://inspectapedia.com/fpe/FPE-Hazards-Revised-070525.pdf