My fuse box has 3 cartridges of 15A fuses along with the regular glass
fuses. The 15A cartridges power the outlets in the kitchen and seem to
be interconnected with some of the circuits that operate on the glass
fuses. My problem is that when the cartridge fuses blow, I go through
4 or 5 of them before I can get one to work. Typcially they blow as
soon as I put them in. Could this be because I did not turn off the
power prior to changing them? Should I be using a time delay fust
instead ( these are no motors on these circuits, just outlets from the
kitchen and garage. Why don't they use glass fuses on all the
circuits?

Anyone have any ideas?

You might want to consider replacing the panel with circuit breakers. It
sounds like the cartridge fuse circuits are overloaded or have an
intermittent short



wrote in message
ps.com...
My fuse box has 3 cartridges of 15A fuses along with the regular glass
fuses. The 15A cartridges power the outlets in the kitchen and seem to
be interconnected with some of the circuits that operate on the glass
fuses. My problem is that when the cartridge fuses blow, I go through
4 or 5 of them before I can get one to work. Typcially they blow as
soon as I put them in. Could this be because I did not turn off the
power prior to changing them? Should I be using a time delay fust
instead ( these are no motors on these circuits, just outlets from the
kitchen and garage. Why don't they use glass fuses on all the
circuits?

Anyone have any ideas?

Of course you shut off stuff before replacing the fuses. Everything
kicks on at once, what do you expect but a blown fuse. Sounds like
you are overloaded, add some more circuits. To save money on fuses
till you get the job done right, but those screw in circuit breakers.
They screw right in the fuse socket, cost about $10 or less.


On 27 Sep 2006 17:49:13 -0700, wrote:

My fuse box has 3 cartridges of 15A fuses along with the regular glass
fuses. The 15A cartridges power the outlets in the kitchen and seem to
be interconnected with some of the circuits that operate on the glass
fuses. My problem is that when the cartridge fuses blow, I go through
4 or 5 of them before I can get one to work. Typcially they blow as
soon as I put them in. Could this be because I did not turn off the
power prior to changing them? Should I be using a time delay fust
instead ( these are no motors on these circuits, just outlets from the
kitchen and garage. Why don't they use glass fuses on all the
circuits?

Anyone have any ideas?

wrote:
My fuse box has 3 cartridges of 15A fuses along with the regular glass
fuses. The 15A cartridges power the outlets in the kitchen and seem to
be interconnected with some of the circuits that operate on the glass
fuses. My problem is that when the cartridge fuses blow, I go through
4 or 5 of them before I can get one to work. Typcially they blow as
soon as I put them in. Could this be because I did not turn off the
power prior to changing them? ...

And, in reinforcement of what another poster said, just to make
certain--

Turn off the _loads_ on the circuits, not just the power to the circuit
panel. The problem is that apparently the circuits are so near
capacity that the surge is blowing them.

Also as noted elsewhere, it does sound as though you are really in need
of upgrading these circuits or adding additional or balancing loads
from these to others that aren't so heavily loaded...one would expect
to go years between blowing a fuse on a normally loaded circuit so if
this is happening relatively frequently, it's a message.