The circuit brakers in my house are a mislabled. Short of hiring an Electrician, how can I get them labled cor
Question:rectly. The house is 24 yrs. old w/ a total of 20 breakers, some of them doubles, of course.
Answers:
Turn things on, and post someone in the house. Flip breakers off to find out what stops working. Get one of these for the outlets.
http://www.acmehowto.com/howto/homemaint...
Heres what you do.Grab an extension cord.A long one.Find a radio and plug into the cord.Take the radio and set it by the panel.Now go around the house and plug into the different rooms one at a time and turn the breaker off till the radio shuts off.Mark the panel accordingly.Lights can be turned on and breakered off for id.
Good luck,
Sp0iler2u
you could turn them off one by one and go about the house checking each outlet and switch, or do this with a helper. most likely your breakers just don't list all of the items they control, and are just a starting point for identifying the circuits primary sections. good luck, hope this helps.
I saw a device that you could plug into the outlet and you could trace the breaker that it was connected to. It was for sale in the Continental Airline "In Flight" Magazine.
all you need is a pad of paper, a pencil, a lamp that works, and about 2 hours of time. If you had a helper that would cut the time down by about 25%.
list all of the breakers on the paper. if you're REALLY organized make a small drawing of the house on another page.
starting in the room closest to the panel plug the lamp in to an outlet and start tripping breakers until it goes out. Note which breaker and which room. Do the same thing with ceiling lights.
next plug, same thing, until you've covered every outlet and lighting fixture in the house.
large appliances like your electric oven and electric stove that are hard wired will generally be the breakers that are "doubles" so turn something on in that appliance and trip the "doubles".
Refrigerators are usually 110 so you can open the door and trip the breakers until the light goes out.
or you can pay an electrician (to do the same thing).
Make some sandwiches and make an afternoon of it!!
This is fairly easy but a little time consuming. Simply turn the breakers off one at a time and see what is deenergized. May take a little investigation like plugging a lamp your are sure it turned on into outlets to see what is turned off and turning on all lights to see what does dark. Two pole breakers will be things like air conditioners, stove or ovens, cooktops, electric water heaters. If you house is not too old you will have three circuits at least in the kitchen and probably more. The three are two different outlet circuits and a micowave oven circuit. You can tell to some degree by looking at the breakers what they feed. Usually 15 amp breakers feed lights, 20 amp feed outlets.
well you could try the same thing the electrician does.. turn off the \circuits one at a time and incorporate the process of elimination(-:
Take a lamp and plug it in to one outlet and make sure it is on. Now have someone stand by that lamp while you flip breakers off one at a time. have that person yell when the lamp goes off and write down the location and the breaker number. Repeat that with all of the outlets. Then do the ceiling lights. All that is left is the refrigerator and garbage disposal kind of appliances. The same kind of watching and turning off will do it there. Then make a chart or spreadsheet of the results. No electrician needed.
Have your wife stand at the panel and flip the breakers while your finger is in the socket. When you stop hollering that is the breaker.HAHA
Try switching off one breaker at a time and see what goes off. Caution the double breakers are probably 220v and whould maybe go to a stove or furnace. Use a small nitelight to check plugs. Also turn on all the light switches and see which ones go out when the breaker switch is turned off. Don't open the breaker pannel that holds the switches, let an electritican do that if necessary.
go to your local home improvement store. look for a circuit tracer. this will have a transmitter that hooks to the cicuit devise. and it will have a detector that you put up to the circuit breaker, until you come to the one for that cicuit. this will take a few minutes, but is the easiest way to identify the circuits breakers. you can also get a new set of ciruit breaker labels at your home improvement center. look in the electrical dept.. some bigger hardware stores may have these items also. ACE hardware, True Value,etc. the local guys sometimes have these items, too.
Warning do Not remove the circuit breaker panel cover, as this can be a shock hazard. if that need doing, you need a licensed electrican.
Work with a friend to turn each breaker on and off and identify which outlets/ lights/appliances are affected by each one. Relabel the breakers accordingly.
Turn everything in your house on. One by one, shut off the circuit breakers and make a note of which things turn off. Turn the breaker back on and repeat for all circuit breakers.
BREAKERS, they're BREAKERS. And you have got to be kidding. You need to ask an obvious question like that?
Go to a home center store or hardware store. The sell a nice ttol to do just that. You plug one end into an outlet and the other end is used at the breaker box. When you test the circuit, one end gives off a signal. The tool that you want is inductive so that you dont have to actually touch the wires in the breaker box, you only have to get near them. Fairly easy and inexpensive.
More Related Questions & Answers...