How Can I Have More Amps In Circuits Than The Service Installed

The National Electrical Code, although sometimes a petty fussy, is the reference book for all sorts of electric specifications in a typical house. Amongst its many data points are circuit-wiring capacities— the number and type of outlets allowed on a circuit protected by a specific-amperage circuit breaker. With a never-ending supply of new electrical appliances and devices, virtually houses take fully loaded service panels with no room for any new circuits.

An electrical panel including black circuit breakers. — Making room for more circuits in a full electric service panel Dwelling house Depot

Fortunately, there'due south more room in the main electric panel than meets the eye if you utilize tandem circuit breakers. Post-obit is a description of what tandem circuit breakers are and how to add a new circuit using them. If your electrical panel is and so undersized that tandem circuit breakers won't solve the problem, you'll probably need to have an electrician install a new electrical service panel.

For more, see Electrical Service Panels & Excursion Breakers: How They Exercise Their Job

Tandem Circuit Breakers

When you look inside your master electrical panel, you'll see that most—just not all—of the circuit breakers are the aforementioned thickness. An extra large breaker is typically at the top of the panel; this is the main service breaker (it shuts off all of the power). In addition, yous will probably see a couple of other extra-thick or double breakers that serve big appliances like the h2o heater and electric range.

The remaining average-sized breakers typically serve lighting, receptacle, and modest appliance circuits in the house, and normally are either fifteen- or xx-amp breakers. Every bit household electrical needs increment, families often run out of these and/or the electrical panel can run out of places to put new ones.

Black tandem single pole 20-amp circuit breaker. — Tandem single pole, 20-amp circuit billow Home Depot

If you lot demand more 15- or 20-amp breakers, a simple solution is to install a tandem breaker. The overall size of a tandem excursion breaker is the same as that of a standard breaker, but instead of a single billow, it has ii narrow side-by-side breakers. You can buy tandem excursion breakers where both sides are xx-amp breakers, both are xv-amp breakers, or one side is 15 amps and the other side is 20 amps.

Even though each "one-half breaker" is thinner than the standard excursion breaker, they offer the same circuit protection. Past removing a standard 20-amp breaker and replacing information technology with a tandem unit of measurement that has two twenty-amp breakers, you lot immediately gain an extra excursion in the electric panel. The wires from the original breaker are fastened to one of the new breakers in the tandem, and the wires feeding your new circuit are fastened to the second billow.

Installing a tandem breaker is a simple chore that takes about 10 minutes. Installing a new circuit with boxes, cables, receptacles, switches, and light fixtures, all the same, takes a lot more time.

Adding a New Circuit

Following is a footstep-by-stride overview that shows what it takes to add a new circuit and connect it to the new breaker. If you lot don't take the tools or skills to safely undertake this work yourself, hire an electrician for the task.

Step 1: First, effigy out what lights, switches, and receptacles you desire, then determine their approximate locations. If yous are calculation a excursion to the interior of your firm in a completely finished room, you'll want to choose a location based on how difficult it volition be to install the cables and box. If yous are just adding a new lighting circuit to an unfinished space such equally a basement, choosing a location will exist much easier.

Step 2: Make a shopping list of what you will need. Get to a dwelling house center, and run it past the clerks in the electrical department. These people are unremarkably well informed and tin easily explicate options you might not have considered.

Step three: Mount the electrical boxes in the desired location and install the proper gauge electrical cable between these boxes. Go along in mind that if your new circuit is going to be on the showtime floor and the business firm is built on a basement, you lot'll need to run the cables through the flooring joists in the basement instead of fishing them through finished walls, floors, and ceilings on the beginning floor.

Stride iv: Install the new receptacles, low-cal fixtures, switches, and embrace plates.

Step 5: Plough off the main breaker at the top of the box, and then remove the panel comprehend past unscrewing a few large screws. Use a voltage tester to be sure the power to the panel is off—touching electrically charged wires or bus confined inside the panel can be deadly. And so, every bit long as all your work occurs below the main breaker, you will not be exposed to any charged ability in the panel box. Past turning off the master power, you cannot be shocked by whatsoever fixture in the house (but you may demand a flashlight since your electricity volition be totally off).

Man's hands unscrewing a panel cover with a screwdriver. — Remove the panel cover screws to gain access to the box. Home Depot

Stride half dozen: Select a standard breaker for replacement, preferably one at the bottom of the box, where removing the existing breaker and installing the new i will be easier.

Step 7: Remove the blackness wire from the existing breaker and pull the breaker out of the box by gripping it on the side where the wire was attached. The breaker is held in the box by a lip on the bus bar. (The bus bar runs down the middle of the back of the box and holds both columns of breakers.) The billow will pin out of its spot until it clears the lip on the bus and then information technology can exist removed.

Circuit breakers with black wires attached including screwed white and copper wires. — Circuit breakers are held past friction to the main bus bar within the panel. Black circuit wires are attached to 1 side of each breaker, while the white and ground wires are held by screws to a vertical grounding bus. Here, the grounding bus is a silver-colored bar running alongside the wire terminate of the breakers. Dwelling house Depot

Step viii: Attach the black wire from the quondam breaker to the top breaker in the new tandem unit of measurement. And so, do the same with the black wire from the new circuit cable.

Step 9: Hook the terminate opposite the black wires onto the jitney bar and push the breaker into the opening until information technology is affluent with the surrounding units.

Step 10: Attach the white and ground wires from the new circuit into the same strip at the dorsum of the box that holds the white and basis wires of the old breaker.

Stride 11: Reattach the panel cover and door, turn on the chief service breaker, and cheque that the new excursion components are working properly.

Steve Willson writes for The Home Depot. He was the habitation improvement editor for Popular Mechanics magazine for 22 years and endemic a carpentry contracting business in Rochester, New York. He has likewise written three books most dwelling house improvement. You can see a selection of circuit breakers by visiting The Abode Depot's website.

This commodity is editorial content that has been contributed to our site at our request and is published for the benefit of our readers. Nosotros accept not been compensated for its placement.