ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Resetting breakers under incandescent loads.

I have had this happen twice now, two different customers. A circuit breaker will not reset, it will snap open, acting like there is a short circuit. In looking for the short circuit, I discovered there were lighting loads turned on. Once these loads were turned off, the breaker will reset fine, and stay set when the lights are switched back on. Once it was a new cutler hammer, the last one was a fairly new GE. I am figuring it is the low resistance of the cold tungsten filaments not allowing the breaker to reset.

The loads were not great, the first time it was a single incandescent bulb, this last one was three cans. The only thing both had in common were 3 way switching, but I can't see how that would matter. Any ideas or anyone else experience this??

wow, never heard of that before...(5 years only in the business)...to my knowledge a GE breaker will hold fast with a dead short for quite some time, pretty strange it would not reset under the conditions you described...interesting, very.

I think it has to do with all of the poor quality bulbs being sold now - I've run across this twice before.

i heard about it as well but depending how many lightbulbs and type it was on the circuit it will affect it but if that keep tripping the breaker you can try to use the high magatinc swd breaker [ kinda like specal order breaker ] that will help to get by the montarly load

Merci , Marc