While most of my bloggings are a bit of rambling on my thoughts for the day, this one is meant to be more practical. As is often the case though, this one starts with a question from a client. Certain areas of the house tend to trip breakers more often than others, particularly the kitchen and bathrooms. Most often the issue is simply that too many devices are on at one time on one circuit. That’s where the call comes in.
We had relatively recently completed a kitchen remodel for this client, and he called with a question about the circuit breaker tripping. At first this took me off guard, because we had intentionally put more than the required number of dedicated circuits in his kitchen to avoid this issue. To my pleasant surprise, he was aware of what was causing the breaker to trip (too many amps at once) but wanted to know how he could figure out what he could plug in at the same time on the same circuit. Luckily, this is simple math. He had an air fryer that he suspected was the culprit, so I asked him to look at the label on the appliance and tell me how many watts it used (1750 watts) and I asked him to look at the breaker and tell me what size breaker had tripped (15amp, as suspected). From here it is simple math. Amps = watts / volts. Or in this case, amps = 1750 / 120. In case you are wondering where I got the 120 volts from, that is the standard for residential wiring in the US, except for some specialty outlets for larger appliances or tools, that may use 240 volts. Another fun fact, the voltage can vary, but somewhere between 110V and 120V is considered normal. If one were to measure the voltage and not have at least 110V, it would be advised to contact the power company, as there is a problem that could potentially damage your electronics in the home, but I digress. The answer to our simple division problem is 14.58 amps. In other words, that 15-amp breaker was almost maxed out with the air fryer on and as soon as he turned on another appliance at the same time the air fryer was on, the breaker was overloaded and did it’s job by tripping and thus shutting off the power to the circuit, avoiding wires overheating and the potential of fire. Now this client knows if he wants to use the air fryer and another appliance at the same time, he needs to plug ‘another appliance’ into one of the other circuits we ran to the kitchen to avoid any problems. Perhaps more importantly, he now knows how to tell if an appliance (or two) will overload the circuit and now you do too.
My personal kitchen was wired almost 45 years ago and not only does it not have enough convenience outlets and they are all on the same 15-amp breaker. For the most part we’ve just learned not to have too many things going at once, but on occasion we’ll forget and be using a countertop appliance and then go to stick something in the microwave and pop goes the breaker. While it can be an inconvenience, I’m glad that the breakers do their job. One day when we get around to remodeling our own kitchen, I’ll be sure to add another circuit or two so that we no longer have this issue. That’s something to consider as you plan your next kitchen remodel.