Breaker box photos... help me interpret.

legrevedotcom

legrevedotcom

Veteran
Heya... I just snapped these shots of my own breaker box in order to learn to how deal with "local" power.
Am I correct in assuming that in my particular box I would be able to pull out roughly 9000w if I just spread them out across the three circuits? Or is the circuit with the kitchen utensils more powerful across the board than the other two?

I take it I would have to turn them on one by one in order to find out which outlets belong to the same circuit? (sorry for the twisted ones... :S)

View attachment 56612View attachment 56613View attachment 56614
 
Wow thats funky, never seen a breaker box like that. Normally the kitchen circuit is a 20amp compared the the other ones that are 15.

Label them while you turn them off and on too
 
Americans are unfamiliar with this setup. We don't recognize the sections with the '1' and '0' and the round knobs. However, the breaker looks to be a 40 amp/230 volt breaker. That would trip at about 9200 watts. The U.S. National Electrical Code allows a draw of 80% of the breaker rating or 7360 watts. Your rules may be different.


[edit] I also notice that the breaker has four contacts. This also is not familiar for the U.S. I don't know if that is 3 phase power or something else.
 
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Might be helpful if you listed your location in your profile to help weed out responses from other countries with different power and regulations.

Good Luck!

Dave
 
Your box does not look like any thing I've ever seen in the US... There for I assume you are in a different country, and for some reason I think the UK. Could be wrong on that but anyway...

But at this point I'd recommend calling a local electrician to instruct you on how to interpret the indications on the box, and the possible routing of the power lines inside the building from this box.

With the standard US power distribution panel, the procedure is to power off each circuit to get an idea of what the wiring is inside the building. There are gadgets that can assist in 'mapping' the circuits without powering off... but that's the usual way to do it. And further, most houses have had the labels made at some point in time, and only if the labels have dried up and fallen off does one have to go through this procedure... or someone has rerouted the circuits after the house was built... usually older homes and buildings have this problem.

In any case... call an electrician... if you don't know what you are looking at...
 
A friend and a couple cell phones are a free way to map your circuits. Make a diagram of all the rooms with outlets and hardwired lights/appliances. Turn stuff off and have someone check every outlet with a circuit tester (or a drop light, a lamp, or whatever) and mark up your chart.

My house was built in the 30's, so circuits have been added willy-nilly over the years; window unit AC circuits were converted to wall outlets when central AC came about, etc. I have breakers that power single outlets across three or four rooms - so one room may have two or three circuits associated with it. Never expect a whole room to be on one circuit without testing everything in the room, especially in the age of "DIY" remodeling shows!
 
Bonus info... you know how you can't see the forest because of the trees? It occured to me that my dad is a electro engineer by trade ( or was...) so the answer was right there in front of me.

EU boxes (Danish) are round like this... you unscrew them and they have these little cylindric fuses inserted. They can be rated with various amounts. Most commonly we use 16A for the kitchen and up to 13A for the other rooms. BUT... in cases of these older buildings, some times you will come across 10A fuses and this is where dad came in handy. Although I could insert a 13A fuse instead of the 10, I shouldn't be doing that really. This is due to the fact that the wiring inside the building in some cases can't handle the extra heat generated from the 13A in comparison to the 10A.
Something similar is even stated in the Stage Light tech handbook, but I failed to remember that.

In worst case scenario, some idiot who just wants to up the ampage could risk overheating the wiring and start a fire inside the building.

So... even though it says 40A on that box, I probably wont be going higher than what ever fuse is in the individual insert. I haven't checked yet since I haven't had a moment where we didn't need the power hehe
 
legrevedotcom said:
In worst case scenario, some idiot who just wants to up the ampage could risk overheating the wiring and start a fire inside the building.

So... even though it says 40A on that box, I probably wont be going higher than what ever fuse is in the individual insert. I haven't checked yet since I haven't had a moment where we didn't need the power hehe
Click to expand...

In the US all 'new' homes, buildings, anything electrical, for most consumer level power, have breaker switches. They are for fixed amps, so without changing the switches out, there's no altering the value. I don't know under what conditions new buildings can have 'fuses' in place. Older houses would have fuses, and so putting a high value fuse for a circuit that was not rated for the higher value, was a real issue. Then there's the 'put a copper penny in'... an invitation for disaster...
 
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