Electrical Tips

[Mr. Ugly]

If you are having "random" trips on your circuit breakers, you might check your heaters.

I replaced an Ebo-Jager last week because the breaker on my DJ strip started tripping about every hour or so. The heater was about 4-5 years old.

I had the same problem last year with another old heater. Different brand, the name of which I don't remember.

The one last year failed more slowly than the Ebo, and every couple weeks or so, the breaker would trip some time during the night.

I originally thought I had a problem with my ballasts because my lights go on at night. The trips seemed random, so I thought I was getting some kind of spike or surge due to intermittent failures in the ballast.

I switched the ballasts to a different strip and still had breaker trips. The only thing left on that strip was the skimmer, return pump, and heaters. The heater seemed to be the most likely cause, and it turned out It was the heater coming on during the cooler evening temperatures.

Any other tips?

 

[sfsuphysics]

How big of a heater? Strange that it would spike that hard unless your circuit was already near overload anyways.

Me I have those old federal pacific breakers, they ain't going to trip before the wires in the wall melt

 

[GreshamH]

Yah it seems to me soemthing is overloaded if a single heater trips your circuit. I doubt your using some commercial heater so what, a couple 500w'ers?

 

[sfsuphysics]

Also, IIRC heaters don't really have much of an initial current surge like lighting typically does.

 

[Gomer]

Got a killowatt meter or ampclamp? What elses shares that power leg?

 

[Mr. Ugly]

That would be the breaker in the DJ strip. Not the panel breaker.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Replace the heater and see if that fixes it

 

[screebo]

When my past heaters have failed, they usually stick "on". This most recently occurred in a very small 50 watt heater in the NanoCube. My clue was finding the chiller cycling endlessly. Duh. Everyday, a little smarter........ :~ My main tank has the heater as an option in the chiller (Teco) Nice to not have them fighting each other, an easy syndrome that occurs when setting them "pretty close" to each other's range.

PS I recently ditched my DJ Strip as it had at least one circuit fail after my ATi BM Skimmer had a stall issue. Still never tripped the integral breaker!