Attn: Computer Experts and Electricians

[Downthestretch55]

Originally Posted by Pointg5

DTS,

It's a breaker, he seemed surprised that the mini fire did not kick the breaker, before the wiring burnt out. The new outlet has a GFC, which he told me would definitely prevent any future problems. I have a feeling that some of the old owners of the house may have wired it themselves, the house was built in 1926.I'll look at the bill this weekend. Thanks for the reply.

I have no mechanical aptitude or knowledge of these things, I respect people who do this work, because I know they work hard and went to school for it and simply I have no ability to do this, but sometimes I think they know they can take advantage of people. The other end of the spectrum is that I had a plumber at my house for about 5 hours and he only charged me $200 for everything..

OK...that's good.
Now look at the breaker that the circuit feeds back to. It will have alittle number on it. It will say 15 amp, 20 amp..on up.
If the demand of the wiring is below the capacity of the breaker, it won't trip.
However, if the wiring is above the capacity, it's time to get the breaker replaced with one that will accept the "load".

Cajun,
It's "electric speak". Figure it this way...like plumbing, if a pipe has a certain volume of stuff that you want to put through it, and you try to put more into it than it can handle, the pipe will burst and you'll have a flood.
With electricity, it's a lot like that, except you'll have a fire.