ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area What do you do with your used breakers?

It's not too often that I have to pull out circuit breakers, as an upgrade is usually to replace an old panel with rewireable fuses (breakers having become common in domestic panels here only in about the last 20 years or so).

I'll generally ask the owner what he wants to do with the old stuff, and 9 times out of 10 he just says "Take it away."

Any of the fuse carriers which are still in good condition I'll keep to use as spares. There are still hundreds of older Wylex and MEM panels in service around here, and it's handy to have a stock of spares for damaged or wrongly-sized fuses, especially the MEM type carriers which went out of production years ago.

I/We save the breakers and use them on other jobs.

i just throw everything in the back of the service truck, and make a trip to the dumpster when i start having trouble seeing out of the rear-view mirror.

The old breakers I have either get left at the job if the owners want them, go in the back of the Hilux as spares to get me out of a bind for spare parts on a Sunday, get thrown out if they are burnt or get donated to the local trade school for the apprentice electricians to use when building up switchboards as part of their trade training if they are still intact but have internal failures.