Tuesday, August 10, 2010

How NOT to Fix a Circuit Breaker

While I was in the middle of cooking dinner (and no, you didn't read that wrong...I was cooking), the entire house lost power. Power outage, we thought after Dan made his way to the electrical box and declared everything ship shape. So, we took the kids out to dinner, because, really, it was like 100 degrees today and without air conditioning....that stinks. We left, fully anticipating that the power would be restored upon our arrival.

Alas, it was not.

I called the power company, reported the outage and was informed a mere 30 minutes later that there was indeed power to our house. Lovely. By this time the kidlets were in bed and two of the three were fast asleep. I made my way down into the basement and proceeded to flip all of the switches myself...except for the top one...also known as the main breaker...because I couldn't get it to budge.

Now, here is where the "don't ever do this unless you're a professional electrician" part comes in. Pay attention.

I thought, perhaps, if I removed the entire covering for the panel I would somehow magically see what was not working and be able to fix it. This, apparently, was not a smart move.

Suffice it to say that when my younger, taller and obviously stronger brother arrived on the scene, he was aghast. In one swift motion he was able to shut off the main breaker and reset it....effectively restoring power to the house and taking business away from our electrician (who is, unfortunately for us, currently vacationing in Florida). After restoring power, said younger brother gave me a well-deserved talking to about NOT taking off the box cover unless I wanted to be found dead on the basement floor.

I deserved the lecture, but alas, it seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Perhaps I should add this to my post on being impulsive...

2 comments:

Dru'el the Chaotic said...

[no user serviceable parts inside]

Gym Mama said...

LOL! Yes, apparently that is very, very true. ;-)