Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
Subject: Re: load testing circuit breakers
From: "David W." 
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 22:05:09 -0600

"T.B."  wrote in
news:10vuaf9kiampiaf@corp.supernews.com: 

> 
> "John A. Weeks III"  wrote in message
> news:john-AD4ABB.00202401022005@news.mpls.visi.com...
>> In article <368b3qF4v5d3jU3@individual.net>,
>>  "Stormin Mormon"  wrote:
>>
>> > What's your concern? I've never heard of anyone doing this. Are you
>> > just compulsive?
>>
>> Pacific Federal breakers have a long history of failing and
>> causing houses to burn down.  I think the original poster
>> wants to test his system, and if it fails, repair it or
>> replace it.
>>
>> While this is uncommon in houses, it is done at the commercial
>> level.  In datacenters where I have worked, we load up all
>> the power, and then do infrared scans of the power lines
>> and connections looking for hot spots and noise generators.
>>
> 
> that is exactly why i'm doing it, because FP breakers are known to
> fail and this is an older rental house that hasn't had the electrical
> service upgraded in prolly over 40 years.
> 
> as for the infrared scans you did at the datacenter, what did you use
> to do the scan?  is that something that could be done for a home by a
> DIYer? 

If you're that worried about it, just have an electrician replace it with a 
Square D load center - the cost isn't all that high. Besides, testing a 
breaker today doesn't mean it won't fail tomorrow.