Re: Why deliberately shorting equipment to blow breakers might be a bad idea . . .

["John, SW Missouri" <jmjones@xxxxxxxxx>]

Some would argue NO GOOD in a residential environment.  Consider a 15
amp circuit in a 30 year old home, that has never been tripped in 30
years.  Now someone plugs in a faulty space heater and it overloads the
circuit, but the breaker doesn't trip !  Don't think this can't happen.

This is one of the reason I like fuses.  They trip no matter what age
they are.

When they first used circuit breakers they were exclusive to commercial
installations.  In fact many were used for lighting and acted as the
switch for the lights.  The maintenance man went around each evening
and turned off the breakers to shut down the lights.  This amounted to
"exercising" the breakers and likely kept them mechanically sound.

Breakers can also be "welded" - something you would never find in a
fuse.

There are also different grades of circuit breakeres and you can bet
builders aren't using the top-of-the-line in residential construction.


The fire we are talking about was a residential care facility, but if
you saw the before pictures you would realize it was nothing more than
an old wood building.  Many parts of rural Missouri lack any type of
building codes.

Again, these are just my personal opinions, YMMV.



>
> Then what the Hell good are the circuit breakers?