Installing A Tandem Circuit Breaker

The new tandem breaker has a knife like mounting cam that fits in the open pan rail slot on the mounting rail bead.

Installing a tandem circuit breaker. Assuming your circuit panel is cleared to accept a tandem breaker you can install it the same way you install a regular breaker. Your home s breaker box has a limited number of circuit breaker slots available. You ll also hear them called duplex slimline twin half height half. That allows you to add new breakers when your breaker box doesn t have any new slots open for it.

A tandem circuit breaker is a double circuit breaker that takes up the space of a single circuit breaker on a panelboard. However installing circuit breakers into most residential electrical panels doesn t have to be dangerous or overly complicated. If these devices were dangerous ge tandem breakers square d tandem breakers and options from other well respected brands wouldn t exist. Next make sure each of the tandem breakers are off.

A tandem breaker fits two individual breakers into the size of one. In fact most people choose not to do it themselves out of fear of being shocked. Loosen the two terminal screws before you install the breaker. Not all qo load centers wi.

Take a look at the breaker and the mounting rail to familiarize yourself with each of them. Circuit breakers come in several styles including the standard single pole breakers that serve 120 volt household circuits and double pole breakers that take up two slots in a breaker box and serve 240 volt appliances a special kind of circuit breaker is the tandem breaker which is designed to allow two 120 volt circuits to be fit into a single slot in the circuit breaker box. Tandem breakers often called split twin or double breakers provide two separate circuits in the space of a regular sized breaker slot every circuit breaker panel a k a. Tutorial for identifying tandemized tandem compatible slots in qo load centers and installing qot tandem qo circuit breakers.