Why is it that a breaker would hold with a dead short on it?
Recently we had a customer with a lightning strike. One circuit would not reset. I went on the troubleshoot with a helper. After taking a look around and unplugging everything on the circuit, I tried to close the breaker and it tripped. It was an old Westinghouse breaker, so just for kicks I replaced it with a new Seimens breaker and went in search of the problem. I took appart what I thought was the first j-box(switch) and told the helper to go reset the breaker. He did and came back saying it held, but was buzzing. I IMMEDIATELY went to the panel to turn it off. As I got there another breaker on the same phase tripped, but this circuit wasn't buzzing anymore and was still on. The wire was smoking. We traced the wire through the attic and found the wire melted throughout the circuit. We found one section where the wire was burned in half, thus why the breaker wasn't buzzing anymore.
This incedent scared me pretty bad. It made me tell everyone in the company to turn off a breaker if it buzzes. We rewired the entire circuit and all is well there, but it could've been very bad.
Today I tried to turn on a breaker on a new installation(15 amp GE). The breaker buzzed, but didn't trip. I had to turn it off. Someone had a ground touching a screw on a receptacle. Why aren't these breakers working???????
[This message has been edited by Electric Eagle (edited 05-28-2003).]
