answersLogoWhite

0


Best Answer

Fuses and circuit breakers are two different circuit-protection safety devices. A house will have either a fuse box populated with removable, screw-in fuses or a breaker box populated with breaker switches. An older house may have a fuse box, wherein are find several round, screw-in fuses. A fuse usually has a glass window in front that gives you a view of the fuse element inside. Normally, the metal element should look intact. If it appears broken or burned, or the glass is blackened, that fuse has blown, doing its job. Each fuse has an ampere rating number; only replace a fuse with one of the same rating. Previous residents may have left you spare fuses inside the fuse box or in a kitchen drawer. If none are around, they can be purchased at a hardware store. Take the old fuse to the store with you to find a match. (Do not touch or insert anything into the empty fuse socket; you could suffer a deadly shock.) Newer homes user breaker boxes. The switches inside perform the same function as fuses but are reusable. Breaker switches may look like simply a different kind of on/off switch (and they can be used that way), but they have a center off position they flip to when overloaded. To reset a breaker, first flip it to the off position and then back to on. You generally don't remove and replace a breaker switch. For both fuses and breakers, it is important to first determine what caused the overload that burnt out the fuse or flipped the breaker. If the problem was simply too many electric-powered items on at a time, turn some off and replace the fuse or reset the breaker. If you can find no apparent cause for an overload, there may be a dangerous short in your wiring or in a plugged-in device or appliance. In this case, replaced fuses and reset breakers will just blow again. You'll need to first discover and fix the source of the problem.

User Avatar

Wiki User

16y ago
This answer is:
User Avatar

Add your answer:

Earn +20 pts
Q: Where are the fuses kept you think you have to change a fuse in your home but you dont see any fuses in the breaker box?
Write your answer...
Submit
Still have questions?
magnify glass
imp
Related questions