Dec 30, 2008

I'm convinced that only the trusty hardware man stands between certain people and catastrophe. Either through ignorance, stupidity or excessive frugality, calamitous plans are hatched everyday by the homeowning public. Plans which left undeterred, will result in mayhem. I heard a coworker say this to a customer today. "Sure you can do that if your plan is to burn the house down." The reply was, "For real?" This customer wanted to know if she could just put a 30 amp fuse in her fuse box because the 15 amp fuses kept blowing. We answer this question a lot. Many of the homes in our area are old and still have fuse boxes, as opposed to circuit breakers, so we sell a lot of fuses. Most people don't really understand why there are fuses in an electrical circuit anyway. It is quite simple. The only reason for a fuse or a circuit breaker is to keep you from overloading a circuit and causing a fire. When a fuse blows, it means that there is too much current passing through the wiring at a given moment, given the size (called its gauge). In the absence of the correct sized fuse, overloading the circuit makes the wire overheat and become a fire hazard. Aren't you glad you asked? Oh, you didn't? Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

7 comments:

Megan said...

Knowledge is power!

Coffee Messiah said...

A guy can learn a lot coming here ; )

Barbara said...

I always did wonder how that all worked. We went to circuit breakers when we remodeled our house about 10 years ago. Electricity is still somewhat of a mystery to me. As long as the lights come on, I don't think about it too much.

I guess if you didn't like a particular customer, you could do some real damage with bad advice...

Jams said...

I had no knowledge of this until I moved into Dad's. He, being a product of the depression and all that, refused to make so called "unnecessary" improvements to his house over the years. That included installation of a circuit breaker box. He had been living alone for many years. When we moved in and started using hairdryers, setting up computers....well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you what happened. Needless to say, the first thing we did was get a circuit breaker box.

Avid Reader said...

Circuit Breakers! Yay! I prefer the Klixon 7277 series, myself.

Avid Reader said...

For anyone interested in 'beginner' electricity I recommend a book from the Eyewitness series for kids and young adults (and all the rest of us.)

Eyewitness: Electricity by Steve Parker.

Squirrel said...

Happy New Year's Eve to the helpfullest hardware man!