- Nov 5, 2001
- 18,367
- 3
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Ok, Last winter we bought a new plasma tv. Soon we began blowing fuses on the circuit for our family room. I determined that an outlet in the garage powering our freezer was on the same circuit. I ran a new circuit just for the freezer.
All was fine until summer came. Now we began blowing fuses again. I determined that the previous owner had also branched off the atrtic fan from the family room circuit, so this week I slaved the fan over to the freezer circuit.
We are still blowing the fuse in the family room. It is a 15A circuit. I have the following in the family room that were on when the fuse blew:
42" TV (399W peak)
Tivo (29W)
DVD (assume 10W in standby...not on when blowing fuse)
HT (assume 10W standby)
3 -65W lightbulbs (5 in the room, but only 3 were on when fuse blew)
ceiling fan (60W fan plus approx. 100W lighting)
laptop (75W)
wii (10W on standby)
PS2 (turned off)
lamp (turned off)
several unused outlets
All of the above totals 888W, so about 7.4Amps. Why on earth would this trip a 15A fuse?
Today I pulled every fuse in the panel except the family room and physically verified that every outlet, piece of equipment, and fixture outside the family room was powerless, so I can't find anything else in the house that would be pulling load on the circuit.
Any ideas??? This is driving me nuts. I had initially tried running a circuit just for the TV, since that seems to be the culprit, as we never had any issues before we got it, but the house configuration makes it very difficult to accomplish this, so I'm trying to avoid it.
**UPDATE**
I noticed that the screw in the back of the fuse socket was kind of corroded. Since I had a spare socket, I ran the circuit to that socket and pt everything back together. It has been over an hour, and the fuse that previously would get pretty warm in about 15 minutes is still cool to the touch. Apparently the corrosion was causing a poor connection and was the source of my woes. Thank god I tried this before climbing up into the attic again!
All was fine until summer came. Now we began blowing fuses again. I determined that the previous owner had also branched off the atrtic fan from the family room circuit, so this week I slaved the fan over to the freezer circuit.
We are still blowing the fuse in the family room. It is a 15A circuit. I have the following in the family room that were on when the fuse blew:
42" TV (399W peak)
Tivo (29W)
DVD (assume 10W in standby...not on when blowing fuse)
HT (assume 10W standby)
3 -65W lightbulbs (5 in the room, but only 3 were on when fuse blew)
ceiling fan (60W fan plus approx. 100W lighting)
laptop (75W)
wii (10W on standby)
PS2 (turned off)
lamp (turned off)
several unused outlets
All of the above totals 888W, so about 7.4Amps. Why on earth would this trip a 15A fuse?
Today I pulled every fuse in the panel except the family room and physically verified that every outlet, piece of equipment, and fixture outside the family room was powerless, so I can't find anything else in the house that would be pulling load on the circuit.
Any ideas??? This is driving me nuts. I had initially tried running a circuit just for the TV, since that seems to be the culprit, as we never had any issues before we got it, but the house configuration makes it very difficult to accomplish this, so I'm trying to avoid it.
**UPDATE**
I noticed that the screw in the back of the fuse socket was kind of corroded. Since I had a spare socket, I ran the circuit to that socket and pt everything back together. It has been over an hour, and the fuse that previously would get pretty warm in about 15 minutes is still cool to the touch. Apparently the corrosion was causing a poor connection and was the source of my woes. Thank god I tried this before climbing up into the attic again!
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