On Sunday, November 30, 2014 8:05:44 PM UTC-5, TimR wrote:
On Sunday, November 30, 2014 6:01:37 PM UTC-5, Stormin Mormon wrote:
In my case, there were two persons in the
church building at the moment he used his
breaker popper. We respected each other
enough to work safely.


You trusted that breaker to a) trip and b) trip fast enough.

Not that I'm advocating the method, but if the breaker doesn't work,
maybe it's better to find out while an electrician is there, watching,
instead of some future time when it similarly won't trip with an
accidental fault.



If it failed, then you'd have had at least 200 Amps flowing down that branch circuit.


Only until the main breaker opened.




Hopefully that's enough to trip the main breaker. If not, you just burned the church down. If there happens to be enough load on that circuit, you might not trip the main, at least not fast enough.

If it doesn't trip the main breaker, then something is likely wrong with the
main breaker too.



I would not trust the safety to catch me if I had an easy alternative, and a good electrician would have one. I think I would rather see an electrician work on a circuit live and carefully than stress a breaker that way.

And then you'd go on living with that defective breaker and main breaker,
thinking that they are working, when they are not.