ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Does anyone do this with their breaker panel?

Some years ago I saw on some program on the 'tube that its not a bad idea once a year or so to simply flick all the breakers on and off in your panel a few times just to keep " the mechanical parts inside free and in working order"....
It does seem like a good idea, and I do that on occasion, even though I know it probably does not operate every linkage and part inside the breaker...
Has anyone else ever heard of that or practice this little bit of "panel maintenance"???


A.D

Otherwise known as "Breaker/Switch Exercise"

It's a good idea, do I do it, no.....

It does give you the opprotunity to find that breaker that is fused shut....

It is highly recommended but seldom done. It is called exercising the breaker. It's sort of like the water stops that supply toilets and faucets. How often do you exercise them? Not. They get your attention when you have to shut them off in an emergancy or to do a repair and the knob won't turn aor you break it off.
When you do this it assures that any lubricant used on the moving parts is distributed but more importantly when the contacts are opened and closed they just don't simply close against one another but the actually rub against one another which would provide a cleaning action to reduce contact resistance.
Ah but you have to reset all of those digital clocks when you do.

That's why you pick either April or October of each year as the time to do the breaker exercising, and you exercise the breakers just before you reset all the clocks for going onto/off of daylight savings time. It's also a good time to change the batteries in the smoke alarms.