Electrical Wiring in Your Home: Understanding the Various Kinds of Circuit Breakers You Should Buy

Electrical power supply often suffers from power surges and fluctuations that can cause excess current to flow into the devices and appliances in your home. Even though the manufacturers may protect some appliances against these power surges, too much voltage isn't good for them. High voltage can not only damage the equipment in your house, but also can lead to a fire breakout, especially when the electrical cables overheat. This is why you need circuit breakers to protect against high voltage surges in your home. When wiring your home for electrical supply, here are some of the circuit breakers that you will be paying for:

HACR Rated Circuit Breakers

HACR is an acronym for heating, air-conditioning and refrigeration circuit breakers. They are designed to protect your heating, ventilation and air-conditioning appliances by opening or shutting off within a certain time curve. The HACR circuit breaker is made in a way that it can be connected to the group motor running the air conditioning equipment such as the compressor, fans and exhaust control. When there is a power voltage surge, the circuit breaker automatically trips and cuts off the power supply to the equipment, thus protecting them.

Single Pole Circuit Breakers

Single pole circuit breakers will be installed in various power supply points in your home. They are used to protect equipment and appliances connected to low voltage power sockets, including things like televisions, mobile phones, light bulbs and portable water heaters. Such equipment can use voltage amounts (as low as fifteen amperes), and they are highly vulnerable when damage from power surges do occur. Just like the HACR circuit breakers, single pole breakers also cut out the power supply to the equipment whenever voltage exceeds a certain limit.

Double Pole Circuit Breakers

You will also need double pole circuit breakers to protect high voltage equipment such as boilers, electric cookers and electric dryers. Unlike single pole circuit breakers that can feed into a power outlet with several branches, double pole breakers have a point-to-point connection feeding directly to the appliance that they are meant to protect. For this reason, double pole circuit breakers have labels indicating the particular device that they are breaking such as electric dryer pole breaker.

Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI)

Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters are used instead of receptacles to trip and cut off the power supply whenever they detect an imbalance in the flow of power. They are installed in wet places such as bathrooms and kitchens where ordinary circuit breakers would easily cause a fire when the electrical cabling comes into contact with water.


Share