Weird smells and blown fuses.

[Ottoshot]

I wonder how Kenny made out with this problem?

As a thrid term electrical apprentice, I suspect that the 60 amp fuse that was blown was the main service fuse, since he said it was in the house and not in his living area.

There are lots of houses that still have 60amp main services. I dont know about US code but Canadian code says every place of residence must have a minimum 100 amp main if being built from the ground up.

I live in an old farmhouse that still has a 60amp fused main. I have blown a 60 amp main fuse before. its really not that alarming. Someone said earlier that only a dead short can cause a 60amp fuse to blow. Totally incorrect. there is a ton of power flowing through the average home today. if I turn everything on in my house, washer, dryer, flat screen, computer, stove, oven etc... and get a load check on one "phase" of the main I read about 55 amps of current. but wire rating is at 80% of what its real rating is. It has to be this way. most of the main services to houses I install are 100A, 150A, and a 200A main is not uncommon, infact very common.

Anyway, my point is that I'm willing to guess that there is alot of people living in this residence and a very small main service. That would explain the 60 amp fuse blowing. The burning smell, could be coming from an electrical circut within the wall OR it might just be dust burning on the space heater if it has been sitting unused all summer and this is the first time its been used since the spring.

You definitly should have an electrician come by but no sane landlord would make their tennants pay for electrical repairs... so really you should have no hesitation in calling him or her, unless... well, I think I know what the situation is here. Its cool I understand, If I lived near you I would swing by and take a look at it to help you out.

hope you can get it fixed and keep your living quarters.

 

[Ottoshot]

what you need, is a load check on the main, and on your curious 30A circut. do not attempt this by yourself. Im just sayin. Your stove circut should be on a 40A fuse/breaker and your dryer should be on a 30A fuse/breaker. those are the two main power suckers in a house, and most main services are calculated for only one stove.

 

[yablanowitz]

You are correct, any combination of loads that totals in excess of 60 amps will blow a 60 amp fuse. I'm certainly not an electrical engineer, electrical contractor or licensed electrician. On the other hand, I didn't get through Naval Nuclear Power School on good looks and charm. I was merely relating what I have experienced in thirty years of building maintenence, renovation work, troubleshooting and repair. I have popped 60 amp breakers in my career, but never without something shorting out. And the only thing I've seen pop a breaker that big was a short in an electric range.

 

[Ottoshot]

well, a short in an electric range should trip the breaker/fuse on the range circut, its dedicated 40A. a trip on the main 60A would be caused by an overload of the main, the stove could be running along with the other appliances in the house and all their dedicated circuits would be fine and not trip their breaker/fuse.

 

[Ottoshot]

does this house have baseboard electric heating or an electric furnace by chance?

 

[KennyB]

does this house have baseboard electric heating or an electric furnace by chance?

Hey, man, saw your email before I checked this thread...

I"m not sure about the furnace. As far as I know it's not running, but there is a large furnace in the same room as the electrical box, and it's hooked up to vents. I don't know if it's electric or gas for sure, but it certainly doesn't look like a gas furnace.

I think your assumption about the 60A fuse being the "main" fuse is correct, because when we blew this out pretty much every room in the house besides the kitchen lost power. Even the porch lights. The only thing that kept power was the kitchen outlets and the fridge, so I'm thinking maybe the kitchen is running off of the range circuits. Too bad I can't remember what all we were running when it blew.

 

[dttomcat]

If your furnace has a cable running into it then it is electric. If it has a gas line running into it then it is a gas furnace. Not very difficult to distinguish between the two.

 

[KennyB]

If your furnace has a cable running into it then it is electric. If it has a gas line running into it then it is a gas furnace. Not very difficult to distinguish between the two.

Well, yeah, but it's kind of in the back of the room behind alot of stuff, so I can't see the things leading into it very well to tell if they're gas pipes or electrical conduits. They look like electrical conduits to be because they have those weird ridges going across like corrugated pipe does.

Plus I can see where the filter goes in, and I remember my old electric furnace having that.

Either way it doesn't seem like it's operating since the house is using space heaters as well.

 

[Gollnick]

Oh lovely. Throw in an abandoned gas furnace burried behind a lot of stuff, that'll make the house safer.

If the 60A did not take down the kitchen, then the 60A is not the one "main" fuse. I suspect that the hous has a cobbled arrangement of several panels. There may or may not actually be a "main" fuse or breaker.

(Curious aside: many years ago, the church I was a member of was broken into. Apparently, in an attempt to disable any security alarm, the thieves pulled off the electric meter. One of the investigating officers found them meter in the bushes and brought it in. "Wait a minute," I said, "The lights are still on." Sure enough, the plugs were all out, but the lights were on. When we called the electric company to put the meter back, they investigated and discovered that, indeed, the 240V circuits which were in a different panel (commercial buildings often use 240V for florescent lights as they are more efficient at higher voltages) were wired in front of the meter. Since the error was in a sealed panel which the electric company had inspected, signed off on and sealed when the building was built about five years earlier, they fixed it and didn't back-bill us. But, out bill did take a definite step up the next month as we started payin for our lights. What was stolen was a microphone, a CD player, and the bowl from the baptismal font that -- even with the window they broke -- all totalled well under than the $500 insurance deductable. But the really expensive thing they stole from us was our free lights!)

Anyway, I think you should store some oily rags and cans of gasoline next to the water heater. That't the only thing this house seems to lack.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

Luckily you don't have the old knob and tube wiring used back in the early days, any one remember this.

 

[Gollnick]

Knob-and-tube is actually quite safe. The problems with it are three-fold: first if you put a nail into a wall, perhaps to hang a picture, and hit one of those wires, there's nothing between you and the electricity. Knob-and-tube also often runs in places where we don't expect it, like right along the level where one might hang pictures. And, second, the wire is often lower-guage than we would use today. This varies. Sometimes, it's way over-kill. Other times, it's very light-weight. Today, the wire guages are standardized for household wiring so that the wires don't get more than barely warm. But, knob-and-tube is old and they were often much more comfortable with the wiring getting a bit hot. The third problem gets bad when it combines with the second. Notice the lack of any insulation i the walls and floors in that picture. That house is going to be EXPENSIVE to heat. And some genious is going to get the idea of foaming in or blowing in some insulation. And it's shortly after that that the fire starts.

The joints in knob-and-tube are often soldered with leaded solder. All of the lead-related issues aside, this is great stuff and makes strong, reliable connections.... much better than the wire nuts we use today. Knob-and-tube wiring was often lovingly installed by skilled craftsmen. One of the reasons for moving away from it was how labor-intensive it was. The result, though, is that it's usually very-well-done.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

...Notice the lack of any insulation i the walls and floors in that picture. That house is going to be EXPENSIVE to heat. And some genious is going to get the idea of foaming in or blowing in some insulation. And it's shortly after that that the fire starts....

That's the problem I ran into in some of the older houses in cities like Perth Amboy and Newark in Jersey.

Then they pack stuff against and on top of the wire, I never liked workin' around it 'cause evreywhere I've ever seen it, it didn't look like the picture.

 

[Ottoshot]

If the 60A did not take down the kitchen, then the 60A is not the one "main" fuse. I suspect that the hous has a cobbled arrangement of several panels. There may or may not actually be a "main" fuse or breaker.

A typical house is on a 120/220v service with three wires coming from the transformer, two hot lines and one neutral. two fused disconnects protect both "phases" independantly. I use the term phase here loosely. So, a regular 15A single pole circuit will only draw from one phase, where as a 220V double pole will draw from both. the object is to balance the loads equally accross both phases but this will never happen exactly.

so when you approach the fuse threshold one phase will blow or trip before the other, generally, allowing 120v to still flow through the remaining fuse and keeping some of the electrical on in the house.

heres an example. in modern homes the kind of recepticle you find on your kitchen counters is A 120v split recepticle on 15 or 20A double pole breaker, if you put the meter on the hot to neutral, you get 120v. If you put the leads on the two hot pins of the recepticle you will read 220V. This is because the double pole breaker it is on is placed on opposite phases within the breaker panel. so, if your service is fused and not on a breaker usually only one fuse will blow which still allows one phase to be energized and allowing 120v through most of the house.

This is my fused main. I have a 100A federal pioneer breaker panel but the 100A breaker is bypassed so essentially ive turned the 100A breaker panel into a 60. The reason for this is that im too cheap to pay for the copper to upgrade the wires to #1 AWG. and because I would have to call hydro for a disconnect.






Notice the two fuses. 90% of the time one fuse will blow instead of both. when this happens you loose all 220V power but keep SOME of your 120V, depending on which breakers or fuses are connected to what phase. this is why some rooms in the house will still have power.

again, I use the term "phase" here loosely. its not really a phase like in 600/208V 3 phase power systems, but it serves the purpose for explanation.

 

[Shann]

Luckily you don't have the old knob and tube wiring used back in the early days, any one remember this.

We had this in our whole house when we moved in 15 years ago. We replaced it all, but never had any problems with it. I think we still have it in our attached shed that has a single light bulb fixture and no outlets.

 

[justjed]

Engineers: If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
If it works, it doesn't have enough features yet.
"It's a spoon." "Yeah, but look at all the cool stuff you can do with it!"
I don't have time for this.....

Sorry. Had to.
But he's right. Think of wires as a pipe, a bigger pipe will carry more stuff. In this case, the stuff is electricity. Just as smaller pipes restrict flow, smaller wires have more resistance. Resistance causes heat. Heat causes fires. Fires cause damage. Damage causes lighter wallets. Lighter wallets cause fewer dates. Fewer dates causes bad atittudes. Bad atittudes cause even fewer dates, especially if you've got no place to take said dates, because of a fire. It's a vicious circuit......

 

[Gollnick]

A typical house is on a 120/220v service with three wires coming from the transformer, two hot lines and one neutral. two fused disconnects protect both "phases" independantly. I use the term phase here loosely. So, a regular 15A single pole circuit will only draw from one phase, where as a 220V double pole will draw from both. the object is to balance the loads equally accross both phases but this will never happen exactly.

so when you approach the fuse threshold one phase will blow or trip before the other, generally, allowing 120v to still flow through the remaining fuse and keeping some of the electrical on in the house.

Good thinking. That could be. The kitchen could be on one leg and the rest of the house on the other. The tell there will be whether or not the stove still worked when that 60A was out.

I still encourage the OP to get the landlord to get a licensed electrician in to inspect and also to try and arrange his affairs so that he can move out of Chateau d'Flame as soon as possible. Especially with the winter heating season coming on quick and space heaters in use, I just see bad things coming.

60A is a lot of power... and blowing a 60A fuse actually requires almost 100A and even that not just for moment but for about five minutes.

HERE is the technical datasheet for a typical residential cartrige fuse (notice that this datasheet is specifically NOT for "slow-blow" or "time-delay" fuses). Look at the graph on the left on page two (the graph on the right is for 600V). This graph shows time-to-blow vs. current. We want to look at the curve labeled 60A which is for a 60A fuse. The minimum current required to blow this fuse is just under 100A, and that is required for 300 seconds, five minutes. To blow this fuse in one minute requires about 130A. And that is why I am so worried about someone blowing a 60A fuse. It does NOT means you had 60A flowing; it means you had at least 100A flowing in that circuit. This is why it is correct to say that it takes something darn close to a dead short to blow a 60A fuse and that is why the blowing of a 60A fuse is a sign of serious trouble which should be investigated by an electrician.