Don't Risk It: How High-Quality Circuit Breakers Protect Your Home
High-Quality Circuit Breakers help protect you from electrical fires and will trip if they detect a problem. It is important to make sure they are checked by an electrician and that the breaker itself works properly and has been tested by a certified professional.
We found a great article from CNET.com that talks about this very topic, we have included part of the article below, for the full article click here.
Enjoy part of this post below!
Circuit Breakers fulfills a simple task:
If too much current flows through the circuit, it breaks the circuit and disconnects the dangerous flow.
The problem isn't the electricity itself, but what it can do: start a fire. If a cable gets damaged, it can create an arc that can ignite wood or other material. This unrestricted flow of current could be caused by a wrongly-wired plug, a faulty device or your dog chewing through a cable. Anything that makes the circuit the current has to flow through shorter than it should be (hence the term short circuit) or sends it to the wrong place is a problem because it can arc and cause a fire. That's the main difference between circuit breakers and the ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) sockets in your kitchen or bathroom: the latter protects you from electrical shock, while the circuit breaker in your basement prevents your house from burning down.
Somewhere in your house or apartment is a circuit panel that contains your circuit breakers. Each of these breakers is connected to a number of wall sockets or a single appliance. How much current will trigger these breakers depends on the type: most wall sockets will have 15- or 20-amp breakers, while large appliances like dryers may have larger ones. Whatever the capacity, they do the same thing: cut off the circuit if they detect a problem.
Inside is a mechanism called a magnetic breaker. In this, there is a coil of wire that the current passes through. Inside this coil is a small metal pin which can slide forward. When it moves, it pushes on another piece of metal, which is connected to a third piece that is part of the circuit. This is the active part of the breaker: normally, the current flows through it. When the pin moves and pushes the second piece, it moves the third piece and the circuit is broken. The circuit gets broken because a sudden increase in the current passing through the coil makes the pin move. The increased magnetic field created by this current pushes the pin, triggering the circuit breaker.
For more read the full article on CNET to read the full story on how circuit breakers will protect your home from electrical fires or other problems.
https://www.cnet.com/news/appliance-science-how-the-circuit-breaker-protects-you-from-fires/
High-Quality Circuit Breakers are important for both residential and commercial properties, make sure you have good equipment that has been tested by a professional.
Here at Civic Recycling, we back up our breaker testing with written test results, an insurance policy for you.
Properly tested circuit breakers are an insurance policy for you, your customers and your business. When it comes to the installation of circuit breakers your company takes on the liability if you install circuit breakers that are untested or have no documentation to back it up.
Eliminate the unnecessary risk with our help
All testing is performed by Certified Low Voltage Circuit Breaker Technicians. Contact us to learn more about this process and how we can give you peace of mind.
Our testing standards meet and/or exceed testing standards set out by PEARL, NEMA, NETA , IEEE and even the manufacturers testing standards.