Circuit B. Testers

Bubbles

Get request occasionally to check and see if the existing circuit breakers are still functioning. Now my uncle would just use and old pair of dykes and cut the hot/neutral at a recep. and see what happens. Worked for him for 30 yrs and no prob but obviously, thats not the way to do it. I did see a tool that does that for about a $1000 somewhere but that would take to long to recoup. Is there something cheaper and still ok out there??

mdshunk

The KO Instrument's CBA-1000 is the only one I know about. I was seriously thinking about getting one myself once upon a time. I decided not to get it since this instrument does its test by plugging it into a receptacle. My fear is that it may possibly blow apart a marginal backstab (or worse, a bad connection in a buried jbox somewhere). I didn't want to turn what could be a good thing into a destructive test. "You broke my wiring" would be the cry.

http://www.koinstruments.com/demo/demo.html

Bubbles

Yeah. I hear ya shunk. It's aggravating sometimes how cheap people are. I usually tell them its looks old so for 5 bucks why don't we just put a new one in and they still want to look at it. Go figure. I'll check out the device anyhow.

thanks

randomkiller

Bubbles are you just starting out in the business?

Bubbles

been in it about 9 yrs. Not green but not an old timer. Why you ask? I feel something bad about to happen.

mdshunk

I think he asked because your 5 dollar quote for a breaker was way, way, way off the mark.

randomkiller

The $5 breaker was a flag and a couple of your other thread questions sounded a tad too basic.

Bubbles

Well, actually breakers here in midwest are 5 bucks unless its a QO or something. That is single pole residential. As far as technical I just keep it light and not too technical. I like the Columbo approach for now.

randomkiller

Look at things with one glass eye? Whats the Columbo approach? We tend not to joke about Columbos around here.

fridaymean

The material cost is $5. What about overhead, profit, time, etc.

fridaymean

Last time we had a bad breaker call, it was about $100. Granted it was two single pole siemens 10min. of work, and about a half hour D.T. So, I hr, plus two breakers.