# Weird electrical breaker occurrence

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-electrical-breaker-occurrence/818691>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 27, 2018, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-electrical-breaker-occurrence/818691 "2018-07-27T18:28:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2018, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-electrical-breaker-occurrence/818691/41 "2018-07-31T15:16:34Z")

</div>

> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> What could have caused that? I’m no electrician, but I thought that when a breaker wouldn’t reset, even after a while, then that meant there was a bad connection or component somewhere.

Personally I would disagree with this. I have had an experience similar to this. Oops I see I have a story very similar to Shoeless. My wife plugged a hair dryer into a different outlet [from what she usually does] in the upstairs bathroom and it tripped the GFCI and it wouldn’t reset. To make a long story short; I recently upgraded my kitchen and moved my ‘old’ refrigerator out to the garage. The fridge circuit was on the same circuit as my upstairs GFCI outlet. Neither one were enough to trip it; but together they were.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Textual\_Innuendo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/898d66/32.png) [@Textual\_Innuendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Textual_Innuendo)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-electrical-breaker-occurrence/818691/42 "2018-08-02T14:16:19Z")

</div>

> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#):
>
> That is, I didn’t have to reset it - all I had to do was touch it. I removed the breaker and looked at the contacts, both on the breaker and in the box. They were corroded. The breaker wasn’t tripping at all - there was a bad contact, and wiggling things would re-establish the contact temporarily.

I’ve had a similar experience, although it wasn’t the contacts that were corroded, but the actual metal main that the breaker clamps onto had worn / corroded away over the years, leading to a bad contact. Moving to an empty slot in the breaker box fixed it (although I did also replace the breaker as cheap insurance).

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-electrical-breaker-occurrence/818691.md?page=2)