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Had a 200 amp Square D breaker fail on a job in Cincinnati last week.
It was a QO model, just a few years old. Tripped under normal load and wouldn't reset. I swapped it out, but it got me thinking. One side says it's a fluke, just replace and move on. The other side says it's a sign to push for whole panel upgrades more often. What's your go-to move when you find a bad breaker on a newer install?
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claire_butler111d ago
That line about it being a sign to push for whole panel upgrades really hit me. I used to be firmly in the "just swap it" camp, treating every bad breaker as a one-off. Finding a failed Square D that new would have been my proof. But I've seen a few too many "flukes" in panels from the same bad batch or with hidden corrosion. Now one failure makes me look at the whole box twice as hard. It's not an automatic upsell, but it changes the conversation with the homeowner about the system's real condition.
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linda_wood11d ago
Ever think about how insurance companies view this? @claire_butler1 If they see a pattern of failures later, they might call it a known defect you ignored.
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