Home electrical questions

Hey guys,

My home was built in 2014 and my office has a 20amp breaker. My personal computer and my work computer are very high draw devices. When they both spin up (along with a few other lower draw items) I can easily trip the breaker. I try to manage the device usage in my office, but tripping the breaker is still an occasional occurrence.

Can a breaker eventually become damaged from being tripped?
How challenging is it to add an additional circuit to a room in a house? My office is almost directly above the breaker box.
When a house is wired, does each room/zone only get a single wire from the breaker box? I assume that you would have to tear open the walls to run a new wire?

Thanks for any feedback.

 

I mean physically, you can replace one; eventually the little metal contacts can become worn and break.

You *CAN* upgrade a breaker, but only in specific circumstances, and I would *NOT* advise doing that unless you have someone evaluate your electrical system for one of those specific situations that may warrant it. We did replace one 25A with a 30A, but in truth that wasn’t to “upgrade” so much as it was to fix a mistake made when the original system was installed.

 

Obviously not laptops. Those must be monster desktops to pull that much current. You might try a line conditioner or battery backup device that may smooth the voltage some on startup. That would be less trouble and cost than adding a circuit.

 

What kind of breaker is it? A picture may help depending on what's going on. These are some monster computers or maybe it's the breaker. Sometimes Afci breakers don't play well with electronics. Being as the home is from 2014 I doubt it's an Afci 20A . May need to see what these bad boys are pulling for amp draw to have a better understanding of what may be going on. Could be lots of things.

Running a new line may or may not be easy, depends on the house ranch style etc. Access from panel to where you need. Lots of factors. Usually adding a circuit if access is easy isn't what keeps people from doing it. It's the part of being in a live panel board that does.

 

ohh, i would never try "upgrading" the breaker. that will lead to a house fire. I was suggesting adding a new circuit to the room; one that has a separate breaker.

 

yeah. 2 gaming computers and 4, 27" monitors. The power supplies on the computers are 1000 watt and 850 watt and each monitor can pull 192 watts. If they both are running at full, they will pull over 2600 watts. Plus there is a ceiling fan, a TV, and room lights.

I was looking at watt/amp conversions:
https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/conversions/common/amps-watts.php#content1
and it looks like the max watts on 20 amps is 2400. So it is easy for me to exceed the circuit capacity.

 

Why add another circuit when you can just tie into another one. What room is next to your office?

If you have a shared wall you could easily add a plug in your office that is wired into the bedroom circuit or whatever.

I have seen this done before. People have flipped outlets to the other side of the wall 180 deg. A family remember remodeled once and a bathroom plug got flipped into the kitchen. The kitchen and bathroom share a wall. Now her blender runs on the circuit for the bathroom and doesn’t trip the kitchen circuit

It could be a more simple solution to being able to split your large office load across two circuits

 

temp solution if you can hide the cord ... Find a plug that's on a different breaker and use an extension cord. Make sure the extension cord is rated correctly and nothing gets warm/hot!

I do that in the garage if I need my little heater but extension cord in the garage doesn't look tacky or as tacky

Overall, I try not to ever be anywhere near the max ratings of any ckt or breaker!!

Like with towing, Tundra says 10500 lbs ... Get %70 of that and that's my max towing.

 

Interesting idea. Unfortunately, that would not work in my case. On the other side of one wall is the HVAC closet. On the other side of the second wall is the bathroom... which is tied into the circuit for my office

 

haha... i mentioned that to my wife and she laughed... the kind of laugh that means, "don't you fucking do that"

 

I just spent a week tracing and unfucking everything the prior owner of my home touched (an ongoing theme the last several years). Tapped into whatever he happened upon and the entire upstairs loft was tied in with the back porch on the other side of the house, then fed a handful of random outlets in the gym. Grounds all cut off and 14/2 mixed with 12/2 on a 20A.
I fished a new feed and put the loft on its own 15A (3 LED can lights and four outlets). It involved tiny hands, demoing the wall in two spots to access the panel then over one bay to the first outlet.
This place is from the 70s though, yours ‘should’ be straightforward but to run a new feed will either involve some sheetrock demo or being a magician with a fish tape depending where you need to go and whether theres holes in the studs you can sneak through. You’ll have to trace and separate the outlets if you want to split the branch but shouldnt be too bad. Whatever you do, label your breakers and dont suck.

 

You can also power up things in sequence to avoid surge (switch-on) current. Ever watched Apollo 13? lol
The steady state current is most likely under the limit but then again you are near the limits!!! and in need of real solution.

 

ohh.. the issue is not the surge of turning on the devices. They can all be on at once and sit idle. The issue comes into play when both computers throttle up.

 

I see.

excel sheet doesn't require much power! Quit playing games and get to work! J/K

 

You cannot "upgrade" a breaker. Outlets and lights are on either a 15A or 20A circuit. A breaker can wear out over time, so you could replace it for shits and giggles. If your office is almost directly over the breaker panel, adding another circuit shouldn't be too much of a hassle (given there is enough room in the existing panel). If not, you'll have to add a sub panel to add more circuits. Anyway, a few pieces of drywall would have to be cut out to gain access to the inside of the wall to route the new cable and add new gang boxes. A hole would have to be drilled all the way through the top plate of the 1st floor wall/ bottom plate of the 2nd floor wall where you want the cable to come up.
Someone else mentioned using a UPS. This may or may not work in your case and I would expect the latter based on the power demands you stated earlier.

 

Wow. Gaming on your work computer - AWESOME!

Computers and monitors - especially LED monitors - create havoc on electrical signals. Even with all that ramped up, the breaker should be able to handle it with clean power. But all those electronics make the sine wave look fugly. It may be worth the investment to try this before spending a lot of money adding a circuit:

$280 Tripp Lite LC2400 Line Conditioner 2400W AVR Surge 120V 20A 60Hz 6 Outlet 6-Feet Cord

https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-L...c64-af58-57137bfed884&pd_rd_i=B0000514OG&th=1

And even if it doesn't keep you from replacing your breaker, the cleaner signal will make your stuff last longer by cleaning up the signal and protecting from brownouts.

 

That breaker is only rated at 80% for continuous use. So its really on 1920 watts if you are running it at that capacity for 3+ hours. Yes, eventually the breaker will fail if it tripped too many times. They are supposed to fail in the tripped position but not always and there is potential for fire.

I'd be curious to see what it's really pulling for wattage. It can be checked with an amp meter. Also what type of breaker is it? AFCI breakers have been required on bedroom circuits for 20 years and are known to be problematic with nuisance trips. I'm also a little surprised to hear that it's a 20 amp breaker and not a 15 amp. I find that to be a bit unusual if you live in a tract house.

As far as how easy it would be to add a circuit. Hard to say without at least some pictures, but it sounds like some holes in the drywall would be necessary. May be possible to run a wire through the hvac closet to minimize damage. Have an electrician run a 12/3 cable to the panel. Then you have two dedicated 20 amp circuits for your office.

 

I haven't seen any T slot plugs in the houses I've ever lived. Only seen them in work offices, labs, etc. I thought maybe his house is new (2014) and they now wire some 20A.

 

Breakers can get weak with age and high loads. I'd recommend buying one of those load meters and check each piece to see what the actual current draw is. If you are handy, replacing the breaker is an easy job.

$14 Poniie PN2000 Plug-in Kilowatt Electricity Usage Monitor Electrical Power Consumption Watt Meter Tester

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B077...d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9kZXRhaWwp13NParams

 

Understood. I should probably mention that in my own case, it wasn’t “upgrading” so much as it was fixing a mistake. (I’ll go note that in my original response.)

Our house was rated for a 30A breaker for a water heater; the box could handle it, everything was in place - but for whatever reason they used a 25A, I think, vs a 30A (was for my water heater). After hiring an electrician to determine why the breaker blew every so often, and after he discovered the above, the 25A was replaced with the correct 30A, and all was and has been well.

 

Yeah, I am a software engineer for a video game company and we are always playing games on the work computer. Also, there is alot of software and assets being compiled. The work computer is a beast. Dual Xeon CPUs with 64 cores and 96GB of ram. The video card is only a GTX 1080ti, however. Older, but still very capable.

I will checkout those line conditioners.

 

Please tell me you weren't involved with Cyberpunk 2077. lol

 

haha.. no... Battlefield franchise.

 

I'm somewhat confused about this.
The breakers in a breaker boxes in every house I've ever lived in are 30A, with very few exceptions.
As someone said, they are only rated for 80% of that continual use. Anything above that will eventually trip it, perhaps sooner rather than later.
The outlet at the wall is usually a 15A outlet, and the wire running to it should be appropriately sized for that.
80% of a 20A breaker is 16A. That doesn't give you much wiggle room.
How much voltage you have will affect your max draw. Some places are 110, some 115, and some 120. Simple math, as you saw, to determine your power draw.
You may wish to have an electrician examine your setup? Doesn't seem quite right to me.
Nothing is cheap, though, and there is more powerful less power hungry less heat producing computer hardware out there. May be better to upgrade some of your hardware?

 

All the breakers on the inside box are 20amp 120volt breakers (the outside breaker box has all the higher capacity breakers for the HVAC, stove, laundry, etc..). My office is on #5.



I researched what you said about the 80% rule and that is accurate (I was not aware of that... you learn someone new everyday ). So, at the wall, I have 16amps to play with.
There is no chance of changing my hardware. That is just the nature of the beast. At least the computers are able to throttle their usage and power consumption.
In the end, I just have too much draw from my office. I was just looking for some advise and education on what it would take to increase the power capacity in my office

 

Bust out Mr.Wiggles and go to town.

 

This is the way

 

Personally, if your box has the capacity, I would just add another 20amp breaker where one of the knockouts is, find a good place you can run the 12 gauge wire up through the wall and create another outlet in your office.

 

I run 3 monitors, a gaming computer, a work laptop, an unraid media server, a dedicated backup server and network equipment all off a single 15amp breaker.
Something isn't right with your setup. I doubt you are running full tilt with everything all at once unless you are a professional benchmarker or something.

You could try running a thick extension cord from another rooms breaker and run some equipment off that.

for under $15 i'd try swapping the breaker out
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Square-D-QO-20-Amp-Single-Pole-Circuit-Breaker-QO120CP-QO120CP/100028706

 

Those are arc fault breakers from the looks of it. The manufacturers have “updated” those at least 3-4 times since 2014, and many more times before that. I’ve lost count of what iteration our brand is on at this point. In short, manufacturers have had hell getting those dialed in to avoid nuisance tripping.
It’s very likely that if you go get a new Square D arc fault breaker it’s going to be a different part number than the one you have, and theoretically less prone to nuisance tripping. That would be the easiest route to at least try.

The breaker has a lifetime warranty through Square D, so if you find a supply house worth it’s salt they should exchange it for free. They should be aware that older ones had issues and not have a problem exchanging it for you.