How To Replace Or Move A Circuit Breaker

how's it going you guys it's Scott with everyday home repairs and today I want to show you how to swap out a circuit breaker now this could be because you have a failed circuit breaker it keeps doing nuisance trips on you and you just want to try out a new breaker to see if those nuisance trips go away number two possibly you're installing a new circuit so you need to install a new breaker or number three like my instance you might have a couple circuit breakers that you want to move I have these two 20 amp 120 volt Breakers that I need to move to the top so I can install this 240 volt 30 amp breaker right at the bottom which is going to allow me to install what's called an interlock so I can connect up a gen set or additional power supply to my home just in case we have a power outage and I want to power the critical appliances in my home so let's jump into it starting off with how do we actually safely remove the cover it's best practice to go ahead and hit your main disconnect and then you'll have six mounting screws usually so I'll start at the bottom and work my way up I want to remove the bottom row and the middle row set those off to the side and then work on the slash row while starting to apply pressure to the actual cover now I'll support the cover when I remove this last mounting screw ensuring the color does not fall and especially doesn't fall back into the panel why that's so critical is even though we did turn off our main disconnect and we see our non-contact voltage tester indicates no power coming into any of our Breakers will you still have hot conductors here at the bottom or top coming from your meter base starting off where we had that failed circuit breaker and we just want to swap it out with a new one and hopefully that solves our problem it's really straightforward but there's a couple things we need to consider even before I go get my replacement breaker I do like to remove my failed breaker so I can use that as a reference down at the hardware store and I'm just going to remove the conductor from under the screw terminal and now I'm going these two I'm going to move so I'm turning both of those out and it's really as easy as just rocking that breaker out of the panel on this side you're connecting to the bus bar and then on this side it's just a mounting bracket that you can remove the breaker from now so why you'll actually want to take this with you is the brand Square D that is not all you need to know there's actually two different types of Square D that will have significantly different mounting points for your bus bar and then also this retainer clip or how it mounts to the actual panel this is called a qo but Square D also makes a home line now you might actually have a Siemens panel or a GE panel so it's just better to bring the failed component with you to make this a one trip project then replacement is really that easy you'll start off by actually clipping the breaker into the panel not to the bus bar but actually pressing the breaker into the left hand side and then once that's set you'll go ahead and just rock that back into place onto the bus bar and then with that breaker secured we'll go ahead and put our conductor back under the plate now we're not going directly under the screw terminal but there's actually a plate which you want to make sure your conductor is under and then it's not a bad idea to actually with your fingers or pliers like this to hold that conductor in place making sure it does not back out while you tighten it up and also aligns there's two detents on the top and bottom so you can tighten that up and get a secure hold so the second example we said installing a new circuit the same exact process applies the only other thing you might need to do is remove a few blanks one or two depending on how many circuits you're adding removing those from your cover all you do is just use your pliers twist your blank back and forth and then that will break right off so you can open up those new spots for your Breakers I am moving two Breakers so I'm going to break off both of those blanks to make room on my panel foreign so moving these two Breakers was very straightforward and easy and then I'm just going to put this guy into place as that project's coming up here in the near future but what happens if you wanted to move originally a breaker from up top to bottom so in that case you'd have your conductor short and you want to extend it out here the way I usually do that is with Wago 221 lever nuts so I would just bring a longer same gauge conductor in close that Wago 2 pin lever nut and then just double back that wire extending it out now to the lower part of my panel now that can get a little busy with these wire connectors Wago 221 lever nuts I think work a lot better than wire nuts but now there's an even better way this is pretty new to the US market but it is a butt splice from Wago so if we had that same hot conductor we want it extend it out there's no more doubling back because this is going to be a butt splice that's just going to continue that wire straight down and then that's going to be about as small of a package as you're going to get so to me this is much better than wire nuts even better than those two pin wagos because this is called a 2401 and you can look at a link in the description which will jump you over to my Amazon store and if you look in the electrical section there's a 90 piece kit which is a great way to start off with while go lever nuts and it actually has these 2401 butt splices included with the two wire three wire and five wire which is pretty much going to cover any DIY electrical application so now we're ready to put the cover back on and again you want to take your time to make sure it does not fall back into the panel so usually what I do is I'll take the cover get it set in place aligning that with my Breakers and then I will go ahead and press that against the wall with two screws in my hand which I'll manually get started foreign go ahead and snug those up not completely tightening them yet and then place my four other screws in the cover now with the cover back in place last thing to say if you move things around and now you have an opening you have a slot that is not covered remember to get some filler plates and insert those in so you do not have a bus bar that could be reached with a tool poking through and connecting to that bus bar that would be an unsafe condition that you do not want in your home now it seems like we have an ever increasing need for electrical loads in our house with electric cars and the more common electric appliances replacing some of the older Gas Appliances now you might have a filled panel like I do and maybe have some additional needs with electric cars becoming popular and also electric appliances replacing gas appliances it seems like we have an ever increasing need for electrical capacity in our homes if you're trying to figure out the best path I have two different videos for you this one right here Joel wallsman from Electric Pro cabinet will walk you through installing a sub panel and this one right here there's actually a safe way according to code how to bring two circuits into one breaker so thanks for joining me on this video and we'll catch you on one of those next videos take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 61,306

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Id: BG9I-PokSdI

Length: 8min 19sec (499 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2023