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Took me 5 weeks to figure out why my roommate's frozen burritos kept blowing the breaker
Honestly this one had me feeling so dumb for so long. My roommate Dave eats like 4 frozen burritos a night and our kitchen breaker would trip maybe 3 times a week, always around 9pm. I blamed his microwave first, then I blamed the wiring, then I actually paid a guy $85 to come look at the panel. He found nothing. So for 5 weeks I'm running extension cords to the living room outlet and Dave is acting like this is totally normal. Turns out the real issue was that his mini fridge and the microwave were on the same circuit, and the fridge compressor kicks on right when the microwave hits its last 30 seconds. I moved the fridge to the hallway outlet and we have not tripped once in 12 days. I almost cried in relief, not even joking. Has anyone else had a breaker mystery that turned out to be two dumb things sharing one outlet?
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grant.nina7d ago
That "two dumb things sharing one outlet" line is exactly what an electrician told me once, that breakers usually trip from two normal loads overlapping, not one big one. I read somewhere that a fridge compressor pull can spike way higher for a second when it kicks on, which would explain why the last 30 seconds got you.
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