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Eaton BR and Siemens QP

Merry Christmas
H

hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
Jraef said:
“Will it fit?” is not a valid approach. The correct question is “Can it be used?”

Read NEC 110.3. If the instructions FOR THE LISTING OF THE PRODUCT does not say that you can, you cannot.it really isn’t any more complicated than that (unless you are talking about old panels).
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You and I know it, but Joe Homeowner doesn’t care! LOL!
 
kwired

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
Occupation
EC
hillbilly1 said:
A counter guy at my local supply house was telling a customer that they would fit, I told them I didn’t think they would, but the counter guy was insisting it would. I haven’t tried it, but I assumed he knew his product. I reckon it’s true what they say when you AssUme! LOL!
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It does fit, just not as well as the Homeline breaker does.
 
kwired

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
Occupation
EC
Fred B said:
Those are off brand in that they don't make their own breakers.
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Yes I know. That said I believe Midwest is or was at one time a division of General Electric, and it used to be any factory installed breakers in their equipment was normally GE breakers. Milbank tended to use Siemens breakers for anything factory installed from my observations. But the label listed most other breakers of similar design as acceptable.
 
kwired

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
Occupation
EC
infinity said:
I'm guessing that the guilty party is UL since they likely wrote the standard. Or maybe it's NEMA, either way the public is getting hosed because these circuit breakers (absent Square D QO) are almost all identical.
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And the original Cutler Hammer CH series.

That is for what is still in current production, there were the FPE stablock, Pushmatic, and a few others that were different enough that they wouldn't interchange with anything else.
 
B

brycenesbitt

Senior Member
Location
United States
jaggedben said:
Not sure you got the point.

For the Eaton Type BR/Type C/Type A series, the presently manufactured new breakers have the types written on the breaker that match the old panel labels. You don't need a chart, it's right on the breaker and panels, as long as the panel label is still extant.
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Westinghouse Quicklag is an exception to that. It fits BR and Siemens QP fine, but old panels did not use either QP or BR labels.
Emil-Westinghouse sold that product line to what became Eaton, but the type name did not survive.
--
Why all this mess? Because a few bad actors stuffed poorly fitted breakers in to a enough panels to create enough stink.
Most of the 1" breakers fit tight and nice, and will work just fine regardless of the fine print.
 
Jraef

Jraef

Moderator, OTD
Staff member
Location
San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
Occupation
Electrical Engineer
jim dungar said:
Until the lawyers get involved.😡
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Exactly. IF there is a fire that is in any way attributable to a breaker that was not listed to be used in a panel, its a Code violation and an insurance company can (if they are looking for an excuse) use that to deny payout for the damages. Has it happened often? Not often, but I have seen it. I did some investigation for a customer in around 2008 who lost almost half of his house in a fire attributed to electrical (as most unknown fires are). Farmers Insurance investigator found a Murray breaker in an ITE panel and they went to the local Siemens distributor to get a letter stating that ITE were the same as Siemens, and that Siemens owned Murray and the Murray breakers were the same. The distributor came to me for that letter, which we had already printed out in bulk.
 
tortuga

tortuga

Code Historian
Location
Oregon
Occupation
Electrical Design
brycenesbitt said:
Still got a copy to post?
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This is why I keep a 1/2 dozen unopened Connecticut Electric classified breakers still in retail packaging.
1-pole and 2-pole of the commonly used sizes.
Its really such a random odd quirk that CE paid for all that testing on a plain old QP Siemens breaker.
 
J

jaggedben

Senior Member
Location
Northern California
Occupation
Solar and Energy Storage Installer
tortuga said:
This is why I keep a 1/2 dozen unopened Connecticut Electric classified breakers still in retail packaging.
1-pole and 2-pole of the commonly used sizes.
Its really such a random odd quirk that CE paid for all that testing on a plain old QP Siemens breaker.
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Wait, so it's really just a Siemens QP breaker in CE packaging? It's not labeled differently?
 
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