Circuit breaker in house keeps flipping

Not when I turn on anything extra. Pretty much at random. FWIW, it's a funny-looking circuit breaker that has a bulge on it, different from all the other breakers in the box.

Insights? Recommended plan of action?

It's a ghost. You need to move.

I would call in an electrician and have it looked at. Unless you know what you're doing that isn't something you want to fool around with, and it's not something you want to put off either.

Could be some kind of intermittent short in the wiring. Could be a bad circuit breaker.

Just duct tape it to the on position.

If that were my place, my first call would be to an electrician. That breaker's popping for a reason, and you don't want to find out what the reason is the hard way.

If nothing is trying to turn on and it trips randomly, most likely you just need to call an electrician to replace the breaker.

If the breaker is good something may be periodically drawing juice. Do you have any idea what this breaker is attached to? Maybe your refrigerator? If it's not the breaker itself you may have an appliance that draw an intermittent load (sump pump, refrigerator, water heater, etc.) that is overloading the line from time to time depending on what else is on.

InigoMantoya wrote:

Just duct tape it to the on position.

Why go half ass? Mix up some epoxy. That will make sure it stays on, maybe even through the fire.

A bulge? Not a GFI reset button, but a bulge? It looks like it "should" be there, correct?

Yeah, call an electrician. The two likely options are either that there's a minor short somewhere that's pushing a lot of power through the circuit, or simply that the breaker is old and tripping at a much lower than rated voltage. That wear-down is the one drawback of breakers compared to fuses, and why they do need to be replaced on occasion.

This thread is worthless without pics!

In all seriousness I would call an electrician. I have a buddy who I talked to just last week. He was having a similar issue. It turned out he had a heavy duty extention cable for his dryer running along his pluming. The line was exposed somehow and was feeding electricity directally to his house pluming! He leaned on the pipe when trying to figure out what was wrong with the electric. This it turns out was a bad idea.

Let a professional take the zap for you

LilCodger wrote:
InigoMantoya wrote:

Just duct tape it to the on position.

Why go half ass? Mix up some epoxy. That will make sure it stays on, maybe even through the fire.

A bulge? Not a GFI reset button, but a bulge? It looks like it "should" be there, correct?

Could be a GFI reset button. Not totally sure.

Thanks everybody. I will call an electrician and a priest, and if they can't solve the issue I'll move.

Looks like you've got some kind of alternate universe in there or something.

Yep, here's your problem. Someone set this thing to "Evil."

In the immortal words of Sealab's Captain Murphy: "Stick a penny in there!"

Newer homes have AFCI breakers. (www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/afcifac8.PDF) May or may not apply.

But our AFCI's gave us all kinds of headaches in our newer house due to some screwed up wiring. Was very intermittent.

But it could be also be a GFCI do something similiar

InigoMantoya wrote:

In all seriousness I would call an electrician.

I'm disappointed Inigo, I thought you were a man of conviction, not one to flip-flop on important advice! Your original posting of simply duct taping it on, was much better.

We had a breaker that was tripping. It was replaced by an electrician. Not too expensive and pretty quick.

I had it changed yesterday. It was an AFCI breaker. We'll see what happens.