What would you do?
This may get a little long. So my house is an older house which is the style that I like. With older homes come repair, and holy hell, let me tell you, this house is no exception. We're already spend a pretty penny doing repair/updates. Now we are faced with a new item that needs to be fixed, the entire breaker box. 125 just isn't enough, and the fuses are getting over loaded. We are blowing fuses ALL. THE. TIME. I'm talking every thirty minutes for the ac breaker. And like once a day for the main one, I can't complete a dishwasher cycle without blowing one too. We have two separate accounts. All our extra goes into my account, his account has the money for a down payment for a new car. I still have my car from when I was in high school, it has over 200k miles on it. We've been waiting for it to kick the bucket so we can get a new car. My husband puts 200ish miles a day on it, so there's no point putting all those miles on our family car all the moment, might as well put them on the junker car. We can't only have one car. It's just not possible. So here's where we can't really come to an agreement. If we used the down payment money we could get a new fuse box immediately but we would be s.o.l. if the Saturn blew up. Or we could wait 2 months and have the money to fix it then and not touch the downpayment money. I will say that it's gone way past annoying to hit the breaker all the damn time. What would you do?
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The house of 93!! ?? ?
I was the one saying we wait but honestly, I'm seeing where my husband is coming from. It is a huge pain and he was saying the same thing about blowing it while we're out of the house. That's a lot of breastmilk and food to ruin. It shouldn't be damaging anything since that's the whole purpose of blowing the fuse to start with, but you never know. The only day we need two cars is Saturday since we both work. I didn't even think, I guess we could always rent a car for a day. I'm sure the Saturn would hold up, I've waited 10 years for this car to kick the bucket. I can't test my luck though, she's a fickle batch.
Yeah overloading your breaker on a regular basis is dangerous and a fire hazard. I get you can't have just one vehicle, but maybe you could make it work a couple months if you had to. Or maybe you'll luck out and not car will last a couple more months. But you NEED to upgrade the electrical.
By the way you house wasn't built in 93 was it? Jk jk I had to?
Honestly I would just deal with it a couple more months. I know it sucks but I wouldn't leave my family in a bind just because it got annoying to flip the breaker back on. Just try to cut back on what you are using for the time being. In 2 months when it's fixed you will be so happy you waited
If I had to take an educated guess, it's blowing the main line all the time because we got a bigger fridge. I think that little bit was enough to overload the breaker. This is the original breaker box that came when the house was build so it's outdated as well. 125 just isn't enough for a house this big. The dumbest things cause us to blow them. My hair dryer, the microwave on 60% power or higher, the iron, my floor steamer, the FACKING XBOX AND TV. Lol Can you tell I'm over it? Lol
No 410k unfortunately.
It's not knob and tube wiring, if it was this wouldn't even be an option.
If you're overloading the breaker to that extent it could become a safety issue.
We live in an older home too & have the same issue (not to the same extent though). The wiring in the house simply isn't sufficient for the amount of electrical load of a 2017 family. We'll be moving in a year or so though and my parents will be doing significant renovation including taking down walls & re-wiring so for now we just move the load how we can (e.g. Our living room heater is plugged in the kitchen as opposed the the living room).
Is it possible to find someone to fix the electrical that could set up a payment plan? I know that's not super likely but it never hurts to ask.
Otherwise, I would try and rearrange the load if/however you can. Maybe even unplug large appliances like the stove while running the dishwasher? And unplug things that constantly pull even if "not in use" at night?... just to ensure you're not overloading something while sleeping.
I mean I know the breaker is to protect from the surges but older wiring always makes we worry about the possibility of an electrical fire. ?
But what is causing them to blow? If they blow to prevent damage is it just the box being faulty or is there any underlying issue?
I get it. Hubby and I spent a Thanksgiving weekend texting with my ex BIL who is an electrical engineer and making Home Depot runs AND calling another BIL after we lost lights in 2 rooms and a hallway. Between them and Google we figure out the issue, replaced an outlet and back up and running.
Fuses blow to protect against damage, it's not a safety issue, just a daily facking headache lol
My DH is an electrician and has done years of home wiring and such. Lol he says first a fuse box and breaker box are different things and I saw his eye twitching when I kept interchanging the two as I read him this.
He says replace the breaker box and chance the car. If the car goes you're out a few thousand, but if your breaker box fails and the breakers don't catch it, you're out a house. Your main should almost never trip and that's a sign of bad things. They trip to protect from too much power through the wires, but if that keeps going on eventually they won't trip when they need to.
It's unfortunately more than an inconvenience, and I hope y'all can figure it out.