How Do You Choose The Correct Size For A Circuit Breaker?
According to the United States Fire Administration (USFA), 485 Americans die every year from electrical fires and another 2,305 suffer serious injuries. Every year 67,800 residential fires are attributed to electrical faults. The vast majority of these fires, according to the USFA, are the results of problems with the “fixed wiring,” which includes improperly sized fuses and circuit breakers (CBs.) Back in the days when the Edison Base screw-in fuses were common place, people had a tendency to over-fuse. When a branch circuit fuse blew because they overloaded the circuit, they over-fused the circuit by replacing the 15 Ampere fuse with a 20 or 30 Ampere fuse. This process allowed the conductors to heat up and, in some cases, made their insulation catch fire. Even worse, some people put a penny under the fuse, leaving the circuit totally unprotected. Some of those fires and deaths could have been avoided if the homeowner knew how to size a CB properly. When working with electricity, jus
