CHANGING A 15 AMP BREAKER TO A 20 AMP UPGRADE
CHANGING A 15 AMP BREAKER TO A 20 AMP PROFESSIONAL

One needs just 15 seconds to change the fuse and cause the dumbest tragedy. And the fire could instantly start all over the place, spreading on to the wooden frame, cutting off exits and escape routes. Over-fused circuits are often the longest and, at the same time, the most overloaded ones, going to different rooms and floors in the old house. Burning insulation will ignite an extremely dry dust inside your walls and ceiling. Too much current (or too many Amps) would flow through the wire and burn it before the fuse or breaker blows or trips. Over-fusing happens when the rating of the fuse or breaker is too large for the rated ampere capacity (or ampacity) of the circuit it is supposed to protect. If you replace a 15 Amp fuse or breaker protecting a 15 Amp circuit with a 20 Amp or 30 Amp fuse or breaker, the next thing you should do is book your own funeral. If your breaker keeps tripping and you live in the Phoenix metro area, contact George Brazil’s electricians for help.Over-fusing is the simplest and most terrible single thing that could kill your family and burn the house.

CHANGING A 15 AMP BREAKER TO A 20 AMP PROFESSIONAL

If you want help finding out what’s causing your breaker to trip, contact a professional electrician for help. Important: Do not just keep resetting the breaker! Eventually the breaker will fail and won’t protect your circuit from damage. You can learn more in our article Why Does My Circuit Breaker Keep Tripping?. In order to keep the circuit breaker from tripping, you need to fix the underlying problem.

Here’s a bad breaker we found using thermal imaging. Old, damaged breaker– The breaker itself is the issue and will trip no matter what you do.In other words, electricity is taking a shortcut in the circuit, skipping the appliance and causing the wire to overheat. Short circuit-This happens when a “hot” wire (black) touches another hot wire or a “neutral” wire (white).Overloaded circuit-There are too many appliances on one circuit, or one of the appliances is pulling too many amps because it’s overheating.So let’s look at the… Causes of a tripping circuit breakerĪ circuit breaker usually trips because of one of these issues: So, if a bigger breaker won’t solve the tripping problem, what will? Well, it depends on what’s causing the breaker to trip. But it’s at the expense of damaging your home and putting your family at risk. Sure, the breaker is less likely to trip. See the problem? You’re creating a fire hazard! You’ll now have a circuit breaker that will allow up to 20 amps of electricity to wiring that is only rated to be safe up to 15 amps.

CHANGING A 15 AMP BREAKER TO A 20 AMP UPGRADE

Now let’s say you decided to upgrade that 15-amp breaker to a 20-amp breaker. The tripping breaker is not the problem, but a sign that you have a problem somewhere that could cause your wires to overheat and start a fire. And if more than 15 amps flows through the circuit, the breaker trips. To protect all the wiring in that circuit, a 15-amp circuit breaker is installed. Luckily, your circuit breaker detects when there’s too much electrical flow and “trips” (breaks the circuit).įor example, let’s say you have a circuit with wiring rated to handle 15 amps.

When too many amps flow through a circuit, the wires overheat and can catch surrounding materials (like insulation) on fire.

Understanding your circuit breaker’s purposeĪll the electrical circuits in your home are rated to handle a certain amount of electrical flow (amps). Once we explain that, we’ll show you what’s causing that tripping problem. To help you understand why this is so dangerous, you need to know what the circuit breaker is for. Otherwise, you may burn your house down via electrical fire. You should never just upgrade from a 15-amp breaker to a 20-amp one just because the current one is tripping. The answer: It’s possible, but not advisable without an electrician evaluating the situation. A question we see often is “Can I replace my 15-amp breaker with a 20-amp breaker? My smaller breaker keeps tripping!”

Changing a 15 amp breaker to a 20 amp