Why does my breaker keep tripping?

A breaker that trips once is doing its job. A breaker that trips every Sunday when the vacuum runs, or every January when the space heater comes out, is telling you something specific. There are three things it can be telling you, and you can usually narrow it to one before anyone comes out.

Is it overload, a fault, or a tired breaker?

Overload means the circuit is carrying more than its rating. A 15-amp bedroom circuit in a 1960s ranch off Farrell Road was drawn for a lamp, a clock and a radio. Put a 1,500-watt space heater on it with a hair dryer down the hall and it will trip, correctly, every time. The tell is timing: it trips when a particular thing runs, and it resets and holds until that thing runs again.

A fault is a short or a ground fault somewhere on the run: a nail through a wire in a finished basement, a failed splice in a box, water in an outside receptacle, a cord chewed behind the dryer. The tell is that the breaker trips the instant you reset it, or trips with nothing plugged in.

A worn breaker has been switching the same load for thirty or forty years and the trip mechanism has softened. The tell is a breaker that trips at loads it used to carry, feels warm, or will not seat firmly when you push it back. Zinsco and Federal Pacific panels do the opposite and fail to trip, which is its own problem, covered on the panel page.

What to check before you call

1. Note what was running when it tripped. Write it down; the electrician will ask.
2. Unplug everything on the circuit, reset the breaker, and plug things back in one at a time. If it holds until the space heater, that is overload. If it trips with everything unplugged, that is a fault or the breaker.
3. Press the reset button on every GFCI in the house: bathrooms, kitchen, garage, outside. In a lot of the 1990s two-stories east of the canal one GFCI in the garage protects the outside outlets, and a wet October week trips it.
4. Put a hand near the breaker after it has been running. Warm is normal in July. Hot is not.

When it stops being a reset-and-forget

Stop resetting and call if the breaker trips immediately every time, if it is warm to the touch, if there is any smell at the panel, if the tripping circuit feeds the furnace or the sump pump, or if it is a Federal Pacific or Zinsco panel. Resetting a breaker into a real fault a dozen times is how a splice in a wall becomes a scorched box.

What the fix usually is

Overload gets a dedicated circuit for the load that keeps causing it, or the load moves to another circuit. A fault gets traced with a tester and repaired at the box or the device where it lives. A worn breaker gets replaced, which is a short visit when the panel is a common brand and a longer conversation when it is not. If the house is on a 100-amp service and every circuit is doing double duty, the honest answer is the panel, not the breaker.

If it is tripping right now with the furnace off in January, that is the emergency page. Otherwise, the trip charge and the first hour of tracing are on the rates page, and the electrician will tell you which of the three it is before quoting the fix.