need an experienced electrician.

[Silver86]

i have questions and possibly some work for you.

bare with me as this might get confusing.

our water heater is on a separate breaker, but when ever we have hot weather (like we are currently having) and have the A/c running, the breaker for the water heater trips. the outlet that the a/c is plugged into is on a different circuit than the water heater. i understand what causes a breaker to trip, but this just doesnt make any sense to me. we replaced the water 1.5 years ago, and this same thing also happened with the old heater.

we would just call back the family handyman to come take a look at it, but he is so hard to get a hold of i would just rather hire someone i can pay and trust to get this problem solved.


please help!

[Flicktitty]

Nismodave.....

[nismodave]

pm sent

[PonyKiller87]

Are you sure you know how a CB works? Thermal/magnetic trip. The magnetic part makes it trip fast for really high fault currents. The thermal part is a slow trip as the current heats up the parts in the breaker.

The breaker for the a/c is probably drawing quite a bit and getting a little warm. If the A/c is on a circuit breaker right next to the circuit breaker for the Water heater it could be heating up the circuit breaker water heater circuit breaker and making it trip easier than it would normally.

At a minimum I would move the circuit breakers around to get the heat away from anything that trips easy like the water heater. Also if the receptacle circuit breaker that the a/c is plugged into is only a 15A you may want to look at rewiring that receptacle to a dedicated 20A circuit breaker with #12 wires.

[Silver86]

Are you sure you know how a CB works? Thermal/magnetic trip. The magnetic part makes it trip fast for really high fault currents. The thermal part is a slow trip as the current heats up the parts in the breaker.

The breaker for the a/c is probably drawing quite a bit and getting a little warm. If the A/c is on a circuit breaker right next to the circuit breaker for the Water heater it could be heating up the circuit breaker water heater circuit breaker and making it trip easier than it would normally.

At a minimum I would move the circuit breakers around to get the heat away from anything that trips easy like the water heater. Also if the receptacle circuit breaker that the a/c is plugged into is only a 15A you may want to look at rewiring that receptacle to a dedicated 20A circuit breaker with #12 wires.


never payed attention to what breaker was above the water heater breaker... ill check it out when i get home.

[PonyKiller87]

when you do that just touch the face of all the breakers and see if any of them are noticably hot. If you have a few that are hot and throwing alot of heat into all the other circuit breakers it can cause false tripping.

Any chance your house was an old fused panel that got converted to circuit breakers at some point? Alot of times in that conversion they just did a 1 to 1 move of the circuits, leaving them loaded up more than you would in modern construction. A good thing to do would be to figure out exactly what is on each circuit breaker by turning everything on and then turning one CB off at a time and seeing what goes off. By code a 15A CB should only have 8 receptacles (or 1440 Watts) or a 20A CB should only have 10 (or 1920 Watts).

[Silver86]

when you do that just touch the face of all the breakers and see if any of them are noticably hot. If you have a few that are hot and throwing alot of heat into all the other circuit breakers it can cause false tripping.

Any chance your house was an old fused panel that got converted to circuit breakers at some point? Alot of times in that conversion they just did a 1 to 1 move of the circuits, leaving them loaded up more than you would in modern construction. A good thing to do would be to figure out exactly what is on each circuit breaker by turning everything on and then turning one CB off at a time and seeing what goes off. By code a 15A CB should only have 8 receptacles (or 1440 Watts) or a 20A CB should only have 10 (or 1920 Watts).

our place was built in the late 80's, so i dont think a fuse box conversion was needed. i could be wrong though... not sure what the standards were in the 80's.

but going off what you said... ill take a look around... hoping this is something simple.

[PonyKiller87]

If it was built in the 80s it should be built to what I posted above, those rules in the code haven't changed in a long time.

Another way to test out the breaker heating issue is find an outlet that is on a breaker thats not near the water heater, use a good heavy extension cord to plug the ac into that outlet and see if it still makes the water heater trip. This would be a good way to test without rewiring anything so you don't waste time/money.

[Silver86]

If it was built in the 80s it should be built to what I posted above, those rules in the code haven't changed in a long time.

Another way to test out the breaker heating issue is find an outlet that is on a breaker thats not near the water heater, use a good heavy extension cord to plug the ac into that outlet and see if it still makes the water heater trip. This would be a good way to test without rewiring anything so you don't waste time/money.


i have a 1yo. so the extension cord is easier said than done, but ill see what i can do.

[WhatsADSM]

another vote for nismo

[PonyKiller87]

i have a 1yo. so the extension cord is easier said than done, but ill see what i can do.

Not saying leave it plugged in that way, just sayin a way to trouble shoot the problem.

And I agree, if you need some stuff rewired have Dave do it, not something you want to do yourself if you don't know how.

[nismodave]

Going to troubleshoot it tommorow.

[Silver86]

Going to troubleshoot it tommorow.

thank you Dave!

[nismodave]

Undersized breaker.

[Yooformula]

Dave to the rescue again!

[Silver86]

Dave, you have a PM.