Thanks for all of the helpful advice. I did some looking around
outside of the building and I found the metering equipment with the
main power cutoff switches. The buzzing and sparking that I've
witnessed in the last month or so must be the arcing. My eyes have
been opened to the Zinsco problem.

Most of the wall receptacles in this place are worn out to the point
where they wont hold a plug. When I replaced one of the receptacles, I
couldn't find the green "ground wire" that the instructions were
telling me to connect - I guess they left that wire out when they did
the wiring here. From what I can tell, everything in this condo is D
grade or lower. My position here is sub-renting from a sub-leaser - I
have absolutely no connection to the person(s) that owns this condo,
which is pretty funny. What's even funnier is that out here, this condo
is probably worth 350k+.

Thanks again.

On Dec 20, 4:53 pm, "
wrote:
I live in a 1960's condo in Souther California. Some of the circuit
breakers have been buzzing since I moved in a few months ago. One in
particular would lose power until it was manipulated into the right
position on the breaker box (some of the breakers are very loose). A
few days ago, the most problematic breaker stopped working, killed the
fridge, and I have not been able to get power back to this side of the
condo since.

The breaker of interest is a double 20amp 2-pole Type Q Zinsco R38.
There does not to appear to be a main breaker that powers down
everything in this box. Am I running any great risk by taking this
breaker out while with the wires still hooked up to it (or even
disconnecting the wires with the breaker switched off)? I am willing
to face anything but death; I'm young and healthy, and I fix cars and
computers and do some home repair (just fyi). My idea is to replace
the breaker with another, less critical, breaker from the box just (i
don't need all of the wall receptacles to have power).

I will appreciate any thoughts on this issue.

Thank you.