Understanding How Your Breaker Box Works

Most of us have a breaker box in our homes. It’s that silver (or painted) cabinet-looking thing that houses a series of switches and wires that most homeowners decide it’s safer to leave alone. The truth is that avoiding your breaker box is usually the best option. Electrical shocks can happen from a breaker box just like any other electrical circuitry. A ground fault could potentially occur while fiddling around in the box, shooting electricity up your arm and stopping your heart dead in its tracks. It’s a better idea to locate an electrician in Concord, NC to help you with your breaker box needs. However, you should at least understand the machinery contained within the breaker box. Some homeowners have never even opened up their breaker box and peeked inside to see what it contained. Knowing how the breaker box works can save you time and trouble later down the road.

How Does it Work?

A breaker box is basically a series of switches, each arranged by value. The breaker exists as the first point where an electrical surge can be stopped. When you get a massive wave of energy, it could damage appliances, or even the homeowner, if it’s big enough. The breakers flip open, breaking the circuit, when there’s an immense surge, stopping the electricity before it can harm anything. A few times we got called out to investigate outages only to find out that the owner didn’t know hoe their breaker worked. We simply flipped the switch and headed back home. If they knew how the thing functioned, they’d have saved us a trip (and their cash). However, there are times you would want to break the flow of electricity yourself, and your breaker is your best friend in doing this.

Flipping the Main Breaker

While it’s usually not recommended you flip the main breaker, in some cases it can be useful. Take, for example, if your house ends up being flooded. There was a case where we visited a home that had ruptured a water main in the basement. The first thing we did was flip the main breaker. As any schoolkid can tell you, water and electricity are the best of friends, but they don’t play very well with the human body. We usually flip the main breaker when we have to do work that requires us to get access to the primary circuit as well. It’s a safety measure we follow very closely.

Flipping the Circuit Breaker

When we’re working on a localized area of the house, let’s say a laundry room, we flip the circuit breaker for that room. That allows the rest of the house to remain on supply while we fiddle around in the laundry room and install your stuff. Before we do any installation, however, we make sure and test the circuits within the area to see if any of them are still live. Safety always comes first in electrical jobs.

Always Hire a Professional

You might think it’s easy for anyone to do electrical work based on what we’ve just told you. Trust us; it’s not as easy as we make it seem. With many years as professional electricians in Concord, NC, we have seen a lot of situations where people only call us after they did something to break their electrical circuits even more. Don’t be like them. Do the smart thing and give us a call today. We’ll give you a glimpse of the breaker box before we shut it off too!