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kgdoube · Jun 15, 2006, 08:13 AM

I guess it would be better to call it a fuse box... not breaker.

I live in a rather old house with k&t wiring. Our box, located in the basement, has all the wiring come in from the top. At the top of the front panel there are two black pull-out things that have markings saying main and off. They are side by side, each one with two fuses below. It seemed to me that just pulling one would kill the power to the two fuses below it, however, as far as I could tell, it killed all power. Does this sound correct?

Also, our landlord said that a house with our type of wiring (knob and tube) does not need to have GFI on our outlets, but I think he is being a bum. Any ansight?

tkrussell · Jun 16, 2006, 02:48 AM

The pull out on there left should be the Main, and kill everything, the one on the right is only for the range.

GFI protection is not required for K&T wiring, only if the two wire outlets are changed to three wire outlets, you do still have only two wire outlets, right?

Three wire outlets can only be used on a two wire system if a GFI breaker or outlet is used to protect all the three wire outlets on a two wire system.

Then each outlet is labeled with a "No Equipment Ground" label that is provided with the breaker or outlet. A GFI only provides ground fault protection and does not create n equipment ground, so the third prong, ground, is useless.

kgdoube · Jun 16, 2006, 12:43 PM

Yeah, only two wire outlets with those ground adapters for the units requiring it (I will be very excited when a storm surges our house and blows all the nice equipment).

So what exactly would the range outlet be used for? Our problem is that we seem to be out of power to provide to the house, as now that summer time has come around it seems our fridge and freezer are working the circuit too hard. We put the deep freezer in last fall and everything was fine for the whole winter time, now that summer is coming around it seems that maybe the deep freezer may have problems. Three fuses have blown in the last few weeks. The furnace is on a 15 amp fuse, but we won't use the furnace during the summer. It would be nice to be able to use that source if it weren't for the fact that the line is hardwired into the furnace. Kind of wasn't to install a j-box there or something...

tkrussell · Jun 17, 2006, 02:12 AM

If you do not have a range, the pull out fuses mau be used for a dryer, water heater, or any other 240 volt load, or even may feed another fuse panel.

If the freezer and refrig are on the same circuit, and each try to start at the same time this could trip that circuit's fuse.

shunned · Jun 17, 2006, 05:36 AM

How many amps is this panel? Can/should this be upgraded to 100A?

kgdoube · Jun 19, 2006, 05:49 AM

The panel provides a total of 70 amps, but there is also an add-on box with another 45 or so for the dryer itself.