What If Your Circuit Breaker Keeps Tripping?

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When you trip a circuit breaker, the room you’re in goes dark. If it’s on a broader scale, your entire house may be impacted.

In many cases, it’s merely a case of having too many high-powered appliances plugged in at one time. It’s something that happens only once in a while.

When a surge of electricity runs through your electrical wiring, the circuit breaker is designed to switch the current to off. This prevents damage to your home and potential threat to you and your family.

To get the electricity flowing again is an easy task. Turn off all lights and appliances in the room affected by the power outage. If a fixture doesn’t have an off switch, unplug the item so it won’t be impacted when the electricity is brought back online. Find the circuit box and locate the breaker that is in the off position. Flip it back to the on position, and turn on the appliances in the appropriate room.

If the circuit keeps tripping again and again, the issue is more dangerous. This is a sign your circuit breaker itself has a problem, or your wiring is no longer performing at the required capacity. Repeated circuit breaker tripping is usually due to:

A short circuit – this is when the electrical circuit allows a current to travel down an unintended path. The result is excessive current flowing into the circuit.

An overloaded circuit – this is when the circuit can’t handle the current being fed into the circuit. It flips to avoid causing a fire.

A ground fault – this is when the hot wire and ground wire touch, pushing too much electricity through the circuit.

If any of these are happening on a regular basis, call in a technician to perform a safety inspection and determine where the problem lies.