- Location
- Chapel Hill, NC
- Occupation
- Retired Electrical Contractor
I talked to another contractor today who had a situation in an older home with reverse polarity throughout the entire house. He said he spent 10 hours over a few days dealing with poco and disconnecting everything to no avail.
Little background. The service was changed many years ago with a cutler hammer panel. In the last month I have run across 4 situations where the main breaker on these older CH panels would not shut off. I had one on my job that I install 15 years ago, another contractor had 2 of the same era and yet another EC had yet another defective one. Mine would not even go into the shut position- it would spring back, they had one that went to the off and there was still power and another guy had his go off then spring back to on in 2 seconds.
Now What does this have to do with the problem. Not sure it is all related because we never were testing the polarity at the other jobs, however when the EC went to turn his breaker off and test on the line side the main would not shut off. He shut all the branch circuits off and still had the reversed polarity.
He decided he had to change the main - did so- and the reverse polarity fixed itself. I suppose something in the breaker must have been shorting to ground a wee bit on the line side of the breaker and creating a false reading. Anyone want to try and explain that otherwise?
BTW- Our CH distributor claims CH warranties their breakers for life so I got mine free. The others didn't know about it but they are going back to get their money as they still have the old ones.
Little background. The service was changed many years ago with a cutler hammer panel. In the last month I have run across 4 situations where the main breaker on these older CH panels would not shut off. I had one on my job that I install 15 years ago, another contractor had 2 of the same era and yet another EC had yet another defective one. Mine would not even go into the shut position- it would spring back, they had one that went to the off and there was still power and another guy had his go off then spring back to on in 2 seconds.
Now What does this have to do with the problem. Not sure it is all related because we never were testing the polarity at the other jobs, however when the EC went to turn his breaker off and test on the line side the main would not shut off. He shut all the branch circuits off and still had the reversed polarity.
He decided he had to change the main - did so- and the reverse polarity fixed itself. I suppose something in the breaker must have been shorting to ground a wee bit on the line side of the breaker and creating a false reading. Anyone want to try and explain that otherwise?
BTW- Our CH distributor claims CH warranties their breakers for life so I got mine free. The others didn't know about it but they are going back to get their money as they still have the old ones.
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