Residential circuit breakers are crucial to the safety of your home, protecting you from electrical fires and mitigating the risk of arc faults, ground faults, shocks, surges, and other dangerous electrical situations.
Continue reading to learn more about the residential breakers offered here at Electrical Supply Distribution or contact us today to place an order.
Why is the Residential Circuit Breaker Important for Home Safety?
Each year, home electrical fires result in an estimated 51,000 fires, leading to over $1 billion in property damage, 1,400 injuries, and 500 deaths annually. Of these, arc faults are responsible for over 28,000 home fires and hundreds of deaths and injuries.
These tragic numbers demonstrate the importance of high-quality residential circuit breakers. Circuit breakers protect your home and mitigate the risk of arc faults, ground faults, and other dangerous electrical hazards.
How Residential Circuit Breakers Work
Circuit breakers work by automatically stopping the flow of current into your home if there’s an overload or short circuit. This prevents arc faults from occurring and mitigates a host of other hazards as well, including sparking appliances, electrocutions, and burns.
Different Types of Residential Circuit Breakers
Here at Electrical Supply Distribution, we stock a wide variety of high-quality residential circuit breakers to help you protect your home from overloads and short circuits. Our inventory includes, but isn’t limited to:
Residential AFCI Circuit Breakers
As mentioned above, arc faults are responsible for over 28,000 home fires in the USA each year. Arc faults occur when damaged, corroded, or loose wiring creates gaps in the electrical circuit. When this happens, the current will jump from one contact to another, creating an arc of electricity that generates heat and can lead to electrical fires.
Arc Fault Circuit Interrupters (also known as AFCI circuit breakers) help protect your home from the danger of arc faults. AFCIs monitor the electric circuit and shut down the flow of current whenever a potentially hazardous situation is detected by the circuit breaker.
Residential AFCI circuit breakers are crucial to the safety of your home as most other circuit breakers lack the ability to detect arc faults.
Residential GFCI Circuit Breakers
Ground faults are a type of short circuit that occurs when a “hot” wire accidentally contacts a ground wire. This removes the current’s resistance and causes a sudden increase in the flow of current — a situation that can lead to electrical fire or shock.
Residential Ground Fault Interrupters (or GFCI circuit breakers) are robust devices that can quickly sense shifts in power and break off a circuit before shock or damage occurs.
Residential Dual-Function Circuit Breakers (AFCI & GFCI)
Dual-function residential circuit breakers are specialized breakers that combine combination type AFCI and class A 5mA GFCI, enabling these industry-leading breakers to protect against both arc faults and ground faults.
Residential Main Breakers
Residential main breakers are the gatekeepers to your home. These robust circuit breakers are designed to stop a much larger amperage load because the main breaker is what greets the two power lines bringing electricity to your service panel. Each power line is transmitting 120 volts, for a total of 240 volts, and the residential main breaker is connected to both these lines.
This means the main breaker has control over all the electricity entering your house. Trip your main breaker and all the power in your house will shut off.
Surge Protection Breakers
Residential surge breakers are designed to protect the valuable appliances and electronics in your home from power surges. Our surge protectors also provide protection from short circuits and overloads, giving you multilevel protection in a single unit.
Residential Thermal Magnetic Circuit Breakers
Our residential thermal-magnetic circuit breakers provide two layers of protection against multiple electrical threats.
The first layer of protection comes in the form of an electromagnet that is extremely sensitive to electrical surges. Should a surge enter your home, the magnet will instantly respond and cause the breaker to shut down the current.
The second layer of protection is a thermal bimetallic strip that bends under prolonged low-level surges and overloads. When the heat of an overload or small surge bends the metal, this triggers a trip bar that instantly shuts off the flow of current.
Different Brands of Residential Circuit Breakers
In addition to a wide variety of breakers, we also stock residential breakers from a wide range of brands, including:
- GE Residential Circuit Breakers
- Siemens Residential Circuit Breakers
- Square D Residential Circuit Breakers
- Cutler-Hammer Residential Circuit Breakers
- Eaton Residential Circuit Breakers
High-Quality Residential Circuit Breakers Near You
Need help deciding which residential circuit breakers you need? Give the circuit breaker specialists here at Electrical Supply Distribution a call today or contact us here.
Our team is happy to answer your questions and help you find the ideal breaker for your unique situation.