420Gator
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S'cribed, this is scary as shit!
If the mating surfaces have been compromised, your surface area is not sufficient to carry the load. It could be a 200 amp breaker, but if the connection has been compromised it may only be able to carry 20 amps. If you're drawing twice that you are still well under the ampacity of the breaker but could be double what the compromised connection is capable of carrying.i have a sub but this is off the main. the wierdest thing is when i first started growing i had 8 lights and lots of ac running with no probs, now i only have 2 1ks going, no ac and just a handfull of small household items. damn im renting and dont wanna come out of pocket to replace the panel but that may be my only option. fuckin cheap ass house with 100a main. i probly need to upgrade anyway
Underground's got it.
i'll try to help by restating.
if i'm seeing that photo correctly, it's melted around the connection to the busses.
that suggests the busses are heating up (not the wire side).
that suggests that there is a restriction in the electrical flow somewhere upstream of your breaker. (the friction of the electrons moving through this restriction creates the heat).
so, that restriction could be a loose connection (like cable to buss bar connection) or corroded metal as Underground explains.
you gotta find where that high resistance connection is and get it fixed,
its a fire danger that only gets worse.
Papa
I'm pretty sure.thanks for the help underground much appreciated. ive got someone who will do the install for 300 and im finding panels online for just over 100 plus all the new breakers. how sure are u its not anything outside the panel? i dont wanna have all this new shit put in and have the same thing happen a few weeks later
I'm pretty sure.
And by upstream, he's saying the problem is before the breaker in the circuit. In this particular case, your problem was where the breaker and buses meet.
Get some of this click here
I use this for everything! Like it way better than that gray crap and it can be used on copper too.
If I was to do something like that.....I would use fine sand paper, make sure buses were still thick enough and apply some of that stuff I linked to on the buses. I would only do this after I knew I was able to reuse the existing conductors. I would bend them near the terminations. If they were stiffer than normal or I heard crackling I would move up the wire until I found where the wire was no longer affected. Then I would make sure that the breaker was wired in such a way that it would not apply any pressure to the breaker. If it wasn't bolted down, I would get a bolt down kit if available for that panel. Then I would check the connection point with an ir laser temp gun. Being a 100 amp breaker it has to be at least 75*C rated. I'd make sure connection point doesn't get much if any higher and make sure it stabilized around that area. I'd do so by checking and logging the temperatures every 15 minutes or so as I brought the load up. Then I would probably check it once an hour for at least 8 hours. If it was getting too hot, I would probably cut back the load until it was in an acceptable range so that I could keep things partially running until I could fix it right.so what if i took the breaker off and sanded down the bus bar?
thanks again. i may just take all the breakers off and clean everything and also have the leads replaced, theyre some kinda cheap thin non-flexable tin tabs coming from the meter not even real wires. then when i put em back ill change thier position to a place that hasnt had multiple breakers melt on it...... does it matter where the main breaker is located on the bus?
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