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Pro tip: stop upsizing the breaker to fix a tripping circuit
Last month I got called to a house in Boise where the homeowner kept swapping a 15 amp breaker for a 20 because the kitchen kept tripping, and he did it four times before calling me. Here is the thing, most of the internet and half the guys I know say just bump the breaker and move on, but that is backwards. The breaker was doing its job, the circuit had a bad backstab on an outlet behind the fridge that was heating up, and I found it with a $30 plug tester in about ten minutes. A 20 amp breaker on 14 gauge wire does not fix a loose connection, it just lets that wire get hotter before anything stops it. People love the quick fix because it is one screw and done, but I would rather pull the panel cover and actually look. How many of you are finding backstabbed outlets still out there, because this house was built in 1998 and it was full of them.
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