A Guide to Fuses

You probably hear friends and family saying they blow fuses in their house constantly but do you even know what a blown circuit is? An electronic tube has a metal area that melts as the current of electricity flows through it ends up being too much. As the strip melts, the power to the whole circuit is separated. If you think that it is a pain to change out that electronic tube, you should be glad when you see one that is blown because that means that your house's electricity is protected. Also, those electronic tubes protect your home against having a fire by causing those tubes to short out which breaks the current and stops a fire from igniting.

Fusible links are somewhat the same as breakers but they have their differences as well. They are the same in the aspect that they both interrupt the power when the flow of electricity is too strong. The circuit breakers are a bit more complicated than semiconductor devices. The advantage to breakers is that they can be reset. However, when you have a blown electrical alloy, it must be replaced with a new one.

These electronic tubes are generally inexpensive and can be found at most hardware, home improvement and electrical stores. They generally cost less than a dollar for each one.

The fusible links can be found in a fuse box that is normally centrally located inside your home. It is important that the box remain closed at all times and that there are no empty spots that are left open. It is also important that the box and the wiring stay dry at all times.

You should label your electrical box. An easy way to do this is to take a piece of tape that you can write on and label each electrical coupling according to the room in your home that it corresponds with. This way if you have a blown one, it is much easier to identify which room in your home has been affected. You should also have some additional fuses on hand.

It is important that you protect each electrical circuit and the best way to do handle this is to avoid overloading the circuit. Determine how many amps as well as volts and which your circuit can handle. It is also important to watch what items are currently running. You basically need to use common sense such as not running three or four electrical items on the same wall outlet.

If you find that you have a blown circuit and when you change up the fuse, the problem is not corrected; then it is most likely not the result of that particular blown circuit. The problem could be a bad circuit or issues within the wiring. If your fuses are burned, it means that those circuits were overloaded. If any are black in color means that something has taken out the entire circuit. In this case, other things would have to be done than just putting in a new fuse to fix the problem.