It’s no secret that most of us rely on electrical appliances to get us by. Our reliance ranges from everything as essential as our fridges and stoves to things as small as our phone chargers and reading lamps. Unfortunately, plugging in so many appliances at once can cause what’s known as a circuit breaker trip. Breaker trips happen to prevent excessive electricity from blowing any fuses in your circuitry.

When you start to experience breaker trips on a regular basis, the frustration can be immense. A solution to the problem may be to install a dedicated circuit in your home to lessen the burden of electricity supply on your main circuit breaker.

What It Is A Dedicated Circuit

Traditionally, all the appliances in your home (aside from the bigger ones), run on separate circuits that all connect to one electrical box. When you use too many machines at once, the breaker trips and every appliance will shut off.

A dedicated circuit means that a single appliance will have a breaker and electrical box of its own, subtracting the electricity it uses from your main circuit breaker. Dedicating a circuit to a select home appliance ensures that the device receives a significant amount of power while eliminating the risk of breaker trips. Not only do dedicated circuits improve how efficiently your electricity runs, but they ensure a more considerable amount of safety when it comes to eliminating trips and preserving your wires.

How to Find It

Learning where the dedicated circuits are and aren’t in your home will enable you to figure out where it might be a good idea to install one.

A licensed electrician with a helpful heart will usually put labels in your electrical box, so you know which appliances have their circuits. Some devices are required to have dedicated circuits, such as refrigerators, freezers, stoves, dishwashers, laundry appliances, and your central AC system, among other things. You should find labels for these larger appliances in your electrical box, though you may be surprised to find circuits dedicated to smaller devices, possibly. You’ll often find that some circuits are dedicated to specific rooms as well.

If you want to get fancy, you can purchase test items such as voltmeters, tick-trackers, and neon testers. When you place these devices into your electrical sockets, a bulb will either light up or stay unlit. A lit bulb means the circuit is hot and working, and an inactive lightbulb means the circuit is off – or not working correctly, in some cases.

When You Should Consider It

After turning on a couple of appliances, you may find that everything shuts off once you turn on the third one, indicating that none of the three machines are on separate circuits. You might not realize how much power some of your smaller appliances use, so when you turn on these three appliances, for example, you use so much electricity that it forces your circuit breaker to trip. In this case, you should consider dedicating a circuit to at least one of these appliances.

Minor appliances that might benefit from having their own circuits include microwaves, toasters, hairdryers, and electric space heaters, among other things. You might also be the type to keep your phone charger, computer charger, alarm clock, and desk lamp all plugged into the same outlet or extension cord. Dedicating a circuit to that specific outlet might be a smart idea so that you don’t have to worry about breaker trips shutting off the power to your essential bedroom items.

In general, you may want to dedicate a circuit to anything that runs on a motor of its own. You’ll also want to keep in mind that depending on where you live and what the conditions of your home are, certain appliances may not be required to have dedicated circuits, whereas other areas may enforce those requirements. It’s always best to check regardless and better to have more dedicated circuits than not enough circuits to handle your home’s overall power.

Your Next Move

You should always contact a licensed electrician whenever you consider upgrading or repairing anything electrical in your home or business. Electricity is nothing to play with, and attempting to fix a problem on your own could worsen your issue or create a bigger problem than you know how to fix. When it comes to installing dedicated circuits, you want to make sure the process goes smoothly and causes no issues.

At D.O.C. Electric Inc., we have the know-how to assist you. We’ll send out a professional Lakeland electrician to help you figure out which appliances deserve dedicated circuits so that you can configure the electricity of your home more efficiently and logically. To get in contact with a Lakeland electrician at our company, contact us, and we’ll help you get your circuits sorted out.