What To Do If The Electric Circuit Breaker Trips?

Every unit has its own electrical panel. Should you discover a circuit failure, follow these steps

Try to determine the cause of the circuit failure:

Usually it’s either a faulty electrical device such as an small appliance, or you may have overloaded a single circuit. You may even notice a burnt smell or hear a noise when this happens. If you suspect a particular appliance or electrical device to be at fault, unplug it immediately.

Overloading a circuit can occur when you have too many high wattage devices on a single outlet. For example, running a microwave and a dual toaster on the same outlet is almost certainly too much!

If you can’t identify the cause of the problem, contact your building manager!

Otherwise, please try to reset the breaker – it’s easy!

A circuit breaker has three positions: on, off  and tripped. Depending on how the breaker is mounted, on and off can be either left, right, up or down. However, the tripped breaker will always be in the ‘center‘ position, so it’s easy to identify!

To properly reset a tripped circuit breaker:

  • First, firmly push the breaker to the off position
  • Then, push the breaker back to the on position.

If the breaker immediately switches back to the tripped position, DON’T try to reset it again. This indicates a persistent problem that is potentially more serious. Please contact your building manager instead.

1.) Identify tripped breaker – notice that is no longer in line with all the other breakers.

identify tripped breaker

2.) Turn off completely – push to the off position

turn off completely_breaker

3.) Turn breaker back on

turn back_breaker

 

If you follow the above steps and you still don’t have any power in your suite, we recommend to contact BC Hydro to verify the status of your account and finally contacting your building manager.