My main circuit breaker is over-heating, what does this mean?

it tripped this morning and was very hot to the touch. this breaker runs all of my indoor aplliances with the exception of our A/C, the washer and dryer are on this breaker panel as well. when the breaker tripped this morning the most that could've been on were the water-heater, dryer, t.v. and fridge, maybe a couple of lights.

My main circuit breaker is over-heating, what does this mean?
if there was not a heavy load on it, it should not have tripped {overload}. loose connections would make it hot however. if all of the major appliances were on along with a bunch of other "stuff" it may have been just doing its job. you may just need a new one, they do go bad sometimes. a basic service call from a qualified eletrician should answer and solve the problem. it is probably not serious, so watch your $ if you know what i mean. judging by your question, i dont think you should try to fix it yourself.
Reply:justathought has it right. That breaker is SERIOUSLY overloaded. Refrigerators should be on one circuit called an "appliance circuit". It doesn't necessarily have to be the only thing on the circuit but the rest of the line should be limited to one or two wall plugs. The dryer is the next culprit. If it is a 220v dryer, it should be on its own circuit with nothing else tapped off that line. The water heater falls under the same caution as the dryer. The TV and a few lights are probably OK on another circuit. The washer would fall under the same notes as the refrigerator. I strongly advice you to follow up on the advice to seek the opinion of a qualified electrician. Without actually seeing what is going on, based on your question only, you are asking for a lot of real problems.
Reply:If your main breaker is hot and trips, you may have a defective main breaker. It there was an overload on the other circuits branched out in the panel, they should have tripped if there was too much load on them. Get an electrician to look at it and replace it if needed.
Reply:Your breaker might be getting old and rusty, or maybe you're pushing your main breaker to the hilt. In theory, all your sub-circuits are not supposed to run at full load at any one time. You'd see that if you totalled all the amps of our subcircuits, the total might be greater that the amp rating of your main breaker... this is because, you do not normally load up all the circuits at the same time. However, if you have come to the point of running extra appliances all the time: clothes dryer, hair dryer, clothes iron, etc., it might be time for you to upgrade your service to the next level. If you have a 100-amp service, it's time to go for a 200-amp service. Your electric utiltity would do the upgrade, but somebody would need to perhaps rebalance your system. An electrician is recommended, unless, you've done your Ohm's Law, and feel comfortable doing electrical wiring.
Reply:breaker is overloaded, you should not have all your appliances on one breaker that could be a fire hazard.
Reply:I would go with the loose connection as the most likely cause.If the terminal screws are loose where the wire connects this will result in excessive heating of the breaker.As you dont mention problems with other breakers tripping only the main breaker I would not think its an overloading problem.


You need a qualified Electrician to open the breaker nbox and check all the connections in there.





Most people never get the breaker board checked but ideally you should every 5 years along with all the power and lighting points from a safety point of view.
Reply:first off....pull the meter to kill the power to the breaker box. pop out the main and look at the back of it. it will have two spring loaded female contacts where it snaps into the bus bars on the breaker box. if the contacts on the breaker and bus bars are corroded they can be cleaned with emery cloth and coated with "no-al-ox" its a greasy nasty stuff that keeps these kind of things from happening. If the contacts on the breaker are burned up you need to replace the breaker. if the bus bars are burned the whole box needs replaced. Buy the parts you need from a real electrical supply house (not lowes or home depot) and make sure to get a box with copper bus bars....if your box had copper bus bars to begin with, none of this would have probably happened in the first place.

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