Thanks, Jeff Sturgeon

All the outlets in our house work fine, save one. With that one, plugging in (and turning on) the vacuum caused the breaker to trip. Most other appliances didn’t, but some did. Clearly there was a problem with the circuit.

It wasn’t overloaded by any stretch, and all the wiring appeared correct according to my plug tester thingy. So maybe it was a bad breaker.

Our landlord is a nice guy, but not always the quickest responder unless it involves imminent danger to the house. I wasn’t going to bug him with a problem I wasn’t even sure of.

I figured to tackle it myself. And thanks to Jeff Sturgeon, I can.

A few months ago, in my old house, Sturgeon showed me how to open the breaker box — something I considered one of the scarier things in my home; there’s a lot of electricity running through there.

Anyway, with Sturgeon’s help we added a circuit to that house, and thus the mystery and fear associated with the breaker box was gone. (In large part because that breaker box was an ugly mess. If I was cool with it, I would be cool with anything.)

I was therefore willing to open the breaker box here. I had identified the questionable breaker, as well as one of the same rating (20A) that wasn’t used at all. (I still don’t know what it controls.)

I opened the box, shut the main breaker, and swapped the questionable one with the unused one. No fear.

And it worked just fine. Now the vacuum doesn’t trip the breaker, and I have Sturgeon to thank for making my life easier.