When supplying an 200 amp service to a pumphouse for an property with acreage, which will go off to feed a greenhouse and a home on different panels, would it be wiser to install an Main Disconnect with fuses as the main service with a splitter, or would an combination Square D Panel with push on breakers be sufficient to handle any loads that may arise for this residential property?
fuses versus breakers?
- Thread starter powerplay
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- San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
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- Electrical Engineer
Sq. D push on breakers? Something new?
Breakers vs fuses is an old and constant battle, there are as many opinions as there are suppliers. Generally if the Available Fault Current is high, fuses win hands own. But that is rarely the case in residential services and if fuses blow, you have to have a spare on hand. In general that will only be the case the first time, almost everybody forgets to buy the replacement after that. So"down time" becomes an issue and most residential customers have zero tolerance for it, nor are 99.99999% of them qualified to change out a 200A fuse safely. I would suggest breakers.
Breakers vs fuses is an old and constant battle, there are as many opinions as there are suppliers. Generally if the Available Fault Current is high, fuses win hands own. But that is rarely the case in residential services and if fuses blow, you have to have a spare on hand. In general that will only be the case the first time, almost everybody forgets to buy the replacement after that. So"down time" becomes an issue and most residential customers have zero tolerance for it, nor are 99.99999% of them qualified to change out a 200A fuse safely. I would suggest breakers.
- Location
- San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
- Occupation
- Electrical Engineer
There used to be a CB product made by Bulldog Electric, then later ITE with a line called "Pushmatic" that was literally a push button operation instead of a toggle switch. They were junk and when Siemens bought ITE they dumped the product onto a company called Connecticut Electric who still sells them for replacement purposes. No idea if they are still junk or not, one would hope that a new mfr would have fixed the problems.
But it just occurred to me that they may have meant "stab in" breakers as opposed to "bolt on" breakers: i.e. QO vs QOB...
kwired
Electron manager
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- NE Nebraska
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