Your home's circuit breakers have a very important job: to transfer and regulate the residential electric service coming into your house to its respective points of contact. Everything from your light switches to your refrigerator to your central AC is controlled by the main control panel. Tripped breakers are not uncommon, particularly in older houses that feature outdated wiring or have modern load demands that exceed what the fuse panel can safely accommodate.
Why Your Electrical Panel Is Acting Up
Blown fuses are annoying because you have to replace them every time they break, while their new-age alternatives can be reset with a quick flip of a switch. At any rate, it is never fun to have to bust out the flashlight and reactivate the power. Tripped breakers will happen from time to time when there is an overload of electricity passing through a certain line. This can be due to too many devices running simultaneously or during a lightning storm.
The reasons for the dreaded "trip" are ground faults, circuit faults and overloaded circuits. The latter is the easiest to remedy but may require the installation of additional dedicated lines, in which case you will need to hire an Atlanta technician for the job. System faults are naturally more dangerous since they tend to indicate damaged or exposed wiring or larger main panel complications that only a certified Atlanta electrical contractor is equipped to handle.
Circuit faults occur when two hot (black) wires or one hot and one neutral (white) wire come into contact with one another. Oftentimes, this happens inside the outlet box, but it can happen anywhere down the line. This type of contact instantly creates an excess amount of heat, thereby triggering the circuit breaker to trip off. Loose connections and incorrectly installed wiring are the usual suspects for short circuits, and you can identify the problem by the smell of burnt and/or discolored electrical wires.
Ground faults occur when a hot line connects with the ground (green) wire in the outlet box. If one or more of your circuit breakers continues to trip despite your best efforts to solve the problem, please contact our expert Atlanta technicians. These issues are just as dangerous as they are inconvenient.
To learn more about how your circuit breakers and electrical panels work, visit our electrical education page.