Am I pulling too many amps

circuit breaker

I recently purchased a mobile home with a large workshop and 2 car garage. The panel inside the home is 100 amps. The outside panel has 100 amps at the meter. In the outside panel there is 100 amp breaker for the home along with 2 other breakers a 60 amp to the workshop and 40 amp to the garage.

All three buildings are drawing continuously with water pump and outside lights at night. My outside breaker has tripped several time when the furnace and the clothes dryer are running. My power bill was over $500 this month. Am I drawing too many amps?

Best Answer

Yes. Given your service and power demands, the fact you are tripping your main breaker meaning it's doing it's job properly, and your high power bills, so YES, you are overloading your service/system. I presume your furnace is electric resistance as well as your clothes dryer. If so, and you want to stay "all electric" you are going to have to upgrade your main panel to 200 amps. If you have gas available, changing to a gas furnace and/or clothes dryer could possibly avoid the necessity of replacing the main panel. Its rare for a main breaker to trip, so again, YES you're drawing too much power. If you don't upgrade, the only thing you can do is time your energy consumption, like turning off the furnace when running the dryer. If you have an electric water heater, you might have to turn it off at times as well.

EDIT: If you have natural gas available, it's almost always a LOT less expensive than all electric. If not, propane is another option, but, depending upon where you are and current prices vs. electric, may not save a lot of money on ongoing utility costs.

Checking on your amount of insulation, air leaks and if possible upgrading the insulation and sealing air leaks could minimize your power usage. But for what you've got going on now, Yeah, you are overloading your service.

Related Solutions

Electrical – How many circuits should I include in a sub-panel for workshop

This may not be worth the extra expense and work of installing a sub panel. Looking up some prices from the blue hardware store:

6/3 roll 50 ft       $102        12/2 roll 250 ft   $48
subpanel              $60        3 breakers         $20
3 subpanel breakers   $20        boxes and outlets  $25
main panel breaker    $20
12/2 roll 50 ft       $25
boxes and outlets     $25
-------------------------        ----------------------
total                $255        total              $93

I think 3 circuits is appropriate. One for the tool you're actively running, one for dust collection, and a spare if you need to be running two tools at once.

Edit: If you plan on upgrading to tools that will draw more than 20 amps, it may be worth the extra expense of putting in a subpanel. That way you can use shorter runs of 10/2 or 10/3 from the subpanel to the tools, instead of running all the way back to the main panel.

Add a 240v outlet inline with a sub-panel supply circuit

You need another subpanel

Being out of breaker spaces is an intolerable situation. This invites all sorts of problems - you might balk on installing AFCI breakers because they won't fit; you might inadvertently move an old MWBC onto a tandem and burn your house down.

So what you really need to do is install a subpanel right next to your main panel and start moving circuits over to that. This time, get a large panel. No one has ever written a post on SE saying how they're having problems because they have too many panel spaces. Get a 30-40 space minimum. The moment of buying a service panel is the worst possible time to suddenly develop an urge to save $40.

I recommend looking at panels of good quality (not bottom shelf big box store dreck) for which GFCI and AFCI are affordable (not CH or QO).

Then, it becomes super easy.

As you observed, this question would be a no-brainer if you had the spare panel spaces. Either put this new breaker in the new panel, or move enough 120V circuits to the new panel and put it in the old panel.