How to Tell if a Breaker is Bad

There will undoubtedly come a time in your electrical career where you will need to troubleshoot a bad breaker. How do you go about diagnosing whether or not a breaker is bad?

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Over the course of a circuit-breaker's life it can become damaged. It is a simple mechanical object that always has a certain level of heat it's experiencing, when current is flowing through it. So excessive heat can cause the components inside to weaken over time. Moisture and extreme fluctuations in temperature can also cause breakers to fail over time.

For non-general-use breakers such as smart-breakers, AFCI, GFCI, Dual Function, and shunt-trip breakers, they may have additional internal computer boards and components that can fail too. Many times these utilize more intricate/weaker secondary components that fail more often than the primary components of the breaker.

There are several ways to diagnose a bad breaker, including a simple visual inspection of the handle, the terminal, and the back side of the breaker where it attaches to the panel's busbar. Often times you'll see signs of melted plastic where excess heating occurs, and it's usually where there's a termination or a point where two things are making contact. Other things to watch out for are a breaker not tripping when it is intentionally short circuited. Lastly, if there are no physical signs of damage to the breaker, you can test the internal circuitry of the breaker by testing the terminals with a multimeter. The breaker should have voltage from the output terminal to ground and/or neutral. If it is a 2-pole or 3-pole breaker there should be voltage between each of the terminals of the breaker - typically around 208-240volts from terminal to terminal.

[arlingtonguy]

For those of us that do our own electrical work this kind of video is very helpful. I call an electrician when I don’t understand what the problem is but generally reliable info on electrical systems is hard to come by. Forums are the worst. Keep em coming.

[monicadorian]

I'm a 57 yr young widow and I just bought a 1931 house . I have a 15 amp single breaker in my home that runs several rooms someone crosswired it which I cannot afford to have fixed yet but anyway it only tripped once in a while and now it trips every 10 minutes and I have no idea why until I watched your video I learned a lot I now know how to test the breaker. And everything was simply explained so well that I joined thank you so much no longer afraid to check the breakers.

[Bullfrog]

😂 39 seconds into your video and I'm rolling. I'm going into my 4th month of working for myself and after doing everything but carpet for the last 20 years and I'm learning alot about electrical from your channel. Keep up the good work man.
One of the most rewarding things I've done, next to watching my daughters grow, was teaching (like, they were actually listening and not on their phones) two guys everything I could think to teach them in the time I had. In the beginning, one guy went from handing me a caulking gun when I asked for a torpedo level to doing level 5 smooth finish drywall. The fact that I turned him loose with his capabilities is such a cool feeling and I did that for him and another higher skilled laborer, but you guys are doing it for thousands! My hats off to you brother! Keep it wierd. Lmao. 😂

[KevinCoop]

Dustin, another excellent video! For your viewers information, the manufacturers of breakers state in writing that circuit breakers should be turned off and on six times in a row annually. Almost nobody does it. But, doing this helps find bad breakers before you see the result of a bad one. Also, i don’t think you mentioned it but sometimes breakers just get weak. Example, there is nothing visually wrong, but with only a few amps of load on them, they trip every so often. This is usually a breaker that the owner keeps turning back on numerous times after tripping. Nuisance! Change nuisance tripping breakers rather than resetting, please. Also, NEVER test a breaker by touching live conductors together. Dangerous, and circuit breakers are only guaranteed by manufacturer to trip one time from short circuit. Respectfully, Kevin

[TampaMaximumMike]

If you have a voltage drop across the breaker, it is usually bad. Usually, anything above .1 volts across the breaker means you have resistance, and resistance means you have heat. Pull the breaker and it will usually be heat damaged on the sides or where it connects to the buss bar. When the contacts are closed, there should be no resistance, no voltage drop, and no heat. It always worked for me.

[krisschanz]

Do more troubleshooting videos!! Love this! As a Tech who troubleshoots everyday Its great to hear different perspectives from knowledgeable people. Great job bro 👍🏻

[JoeJ-]

A lot of times, if the wire connected to the breaker's output terminal is melted it's simply because of arcing happening under the screw, simply because whoever installed it didn't tighten the screw enough to hold with a good connection over time, so taking the wire out and cutting it back slightly to fresh copper and restripping it and reinserting it into the breaker output terminal and *properly* tightening the screw will totally fix the problem...

This problem is even worse and more common with aluminum wire, because it expands and contracts more than copper with a load vs. no load, so over time it will loosen an insufficiently tightened screw on a breaker (or device like an outlet, etc.), causing a loose connection and therefore arcing and overheating of the wire insulation and/or possibly the device terminal itself.

If you ever see and fix this problem then you have to be sure to also check to see if the device's or breaker's terminal(s) are still good too and they haven't been overheated also. You can't just ONLY check the wire itself, you have to check both the wire AND the device's terminal(s) for any heat damage, and if the device or breaker's terminal itself has also been overheated from the loose connection, then the device or breaker must be replaced... But if after careful and thorough inspection, you find that it's ONLY the wire end that got overheated from that loose connection, then you can just cut it back and restrip and remount it and *properly* tighten the screw with sufficient torque, as mentioned previously.

[marctalucci]

Have to give a shout out to you for making this video. Watched this last month, last week had a service call for problems with power suddenly went out. Customer had a ge panel, and showed no signs of triped beakers. I took your advice in this video of how to check ge breakers and boom found the tripped one! Love your channel and these types of videos you put out.

[videotreck]

Mushy handles, never heard about it, but wow had the same issue today. All the breaker visibly on but appliance was not working, after watching your video went back to breaker and tested softly as you said and boom found the culprit, reset it and now working even the handle is at off position. Will surely change it next week.
So grateful to you, God bless you.

[EyeMWing]

had some breakers go bad in a shop - popping at ridiculously low loads, etc. Square D QO, so I was curious WTF happened because the entire panel was brand new, so I drilled out the rivets...

Stink bugs had crawled in through the vent holes, and martyred themselves across the contacts.

[willryan]

Your point about "mushy" handles helped me to figure out why my hot water heater stopped working. I had replaced the heater elements and thermostats and spent a couple hours pulling my hair out. Was on the verge of buying a new $600 water heater when i came across this video and i investigated the breaker to find the handle issue. Thanks for your knowledge and great video!!

[robprice]

Thanks man. My best friend Mike passed a cpl years ago. He was a master electrician. I'm in construction and always been very interested. He was a great teacher. I picked up what I could from him. But there is SO much more. I may hv found my new electrical mentor in you. No small thing. I'll be seeing you often. To Mike, and to you. Thank you both,
Rob price

[FSAUDIOGUY]

This is the BEST electrician channel on YouTube! Thank you for filling gaps in my knowledge. Making me a better electrician every day!

[ericw]

I work as an electrician for a Refrigeration company and there are many manufacturing company that have put large refrigeration racks on the roofs of buildings. A main feeder is brought up and branch circuits are distributed from there. During the summer season I have had 15 amp breakers trip with a 5 amp load. From what I have found is the steel box enclosure that sits in direct sun light all day, heats up breaker a derates the handle value of a breaker and wont let it rest because the thermals are hot. One simple test is I pull/replace that breaker, allow it to cool and it would then be able to rest. I've even taken a thermal camera and have seen the breaker reading 140°+. We would then add vent fans to help cool the enclosure... a little.

[tsogrady]

I enjoyed your video, except for the part where you said a breaker will only trip at 130% load. Thermal Breakers have inverse time curves. A 20 amp breaker will trip at 21 amps but it will take a long time. It will trip more quickly at 25, 30 or 40 amps. At 200% load it's not necessarily a short circuit, someone could just be having three hair dryers going at the same time, on the same circuit.
Clients are often confused by this time delay. I often ask him what happened just before the breaker tripped and they will say nothing, but 15 minutes before then added an additional load to the circuit that had overloaded it but they didn't make the connection between that action and the breaker tripping

[patrickbowman]

I'm a retired ired fire alarm tech. We had a customer who had multiple expensive digital amplifier panels smoke because they had a 20A breaker opening for a 4A load. After I finally convinced them to replace the breaker they no longer have low current trigger problems nor several thousand dollar networked digital fire alarm panels bring damaged. Digital equipment do not like to be hard cycled, especially multiple times. I enjoy your presentations and am still learning so I can help others.

[GSR]

Had a VFD blow up on me from a mis-wired control circuit. The 20-amp fuses did not blow at the machine, Nore the 30-amp breaker in the sub panel, which was a GE. The 50-amp breaker in the main panel protecting the sub-panel tripped! It was a Semons brand breaker. This was in my home shop fed by single phase current. All my machines run on VFD's to power 3-phase motors on the machine tools. I am deeply knowledgeable of machine tool wiring and circuitry. My dumb mistake in wiring up the control circuit killed the VFD. I guess it's true you learn from your mistakes, even if they are costly!

You're not too far me, I'm south by about 140 miles! Enjoy your videos, keep up the nice work you do!

[michaelrice]

We had an operator at a stamp mill tell us a breaker had failed for the motor control center. This was the feed for several 1600 amp disconnects for various production motors. The electrician came back and said the breaker had failed. The supervisor asked him how he was sure . . . "Because the building exploded". Yup. There's your problem RIGHT THERE!

[keithvannote]

Dustin, keep these videos coming! I had a problem with a breaker hissing caused by warm moist air from the house traveling up the service conduit and condensing back into water. The water then dripped down and into the first breaker. The resolve was seal off the conduit at the box and replace the breaker.

[network_king]

I had a 20A 120V breaker at work that would trip if plugged a small pancake air compressor into, plug into a different circuit was fine. I asked the electrician at work to look at it and he said sometimes the breakers get old and weak and trip at less than they are rated. He swapped it out and was then fine just like the other circuits.