Electrical Question

[BoSox 15]

Thanks for all of the responses!

I've decided to call an appliance repair person to evaluate it and see if its worth fixing or scrapping.

[Labonte18]

Originally Posted by Crashj007

Range elements can short to ground but shouldn't the breaker interrupt both hot sides of a 220VAC circuit? I'd call in a pro.

Depends on several things.. One of which.. We don't know if this is a true double pole breaker or two single poles with a screw run through them. I've seen that before and that's not overly reliable at tripping both sides. I'm actually surprised, and maybe someone more up to date on code can tell us if I'm just out of date on my info.. Is that still up to code to have a breaker like that? I can't imagine they haven't banned it for just that reason, at least on new installations and changes.

I also don't know how a stove is wired internally.. So, that could play a part as well.

I will still never forget the time that I was replacing a couple of outlets that had been damaged.. Old building that had multiple panels and I couldn't ID the circuit.. I figured.. Eh.. I'll just short it out intentionally to trip the breaker. 10 minutes later when I could see without spots in front of my eyes again.. I actually took the time to track the circuit and found it connected to a 100 Amp breaker. Last time I tried that little trick.

[Zippyman]

Originally Posted by Labonte18

I will still never forget the time that I was replacing a couple of outlets that had been damaged.. Old building that had multiple panels and I couldn't ID the circuit.. I figured.. Eh.. I'll just short it out intentionally to trip the breaker. 10 minutes later when I could see without spots in front of my eyes again.. I actually took the time to track the circuit and found it connected to a 100 Amp breaker. Last time I tried that little trick.

Lol, you only do something like that one time, and hopefully you survive it!

I got in a hurry once when replacing a thermostat on a 208 volt three-phase dishwasher.. figured I'd just nip the tiny (20 gauge?) wire & replace the thermostat without powering the machine down.. There was a "boom" , and my wire cutters had an extra 1/4" notch in them that wasn't present before.. and it didn't trip the breaker either. :-).