I had one last electrical box to install a outlet in, on a live residential circuit, which I had "completed" earlier by wire nutting the wires together to "complete" the circuit. But instead of flipping the breaker to 'off' I decided to try and short the circuit with a screw driver. (many people would find this a foolish practise.) I was surprised to discover that this attempt at shorting failed. I tried again and failed again. So, I think to myself that I might have a bad breaker that doesn't trip when overloaded, but I don't know how to find out for sure. I decide to test another circuit on another breaker, to see if I can overload it. Instead of shorting it, I'll put sufficient load on it to trip it, I think to myself. What I use is two 1500 watt portable heaters and two circular saws, maybe 15 amps each on start-up, I guess. So lots of juice going through the breaker for about 20 seconds. I don't want to fry the wires with a heavy load too long. The breaker does not trip. I repeat a few times, after a cooling of wires period of time in between, but this breaker also does not trip. My thoughts are that it is rare that breakers are faulty and fail to trip. Does anyone have experience with breakers failing to trip due to faulty breakers? Does anyone else have thoughts and opinions on this situation? How can I reliably/cheaply/confidently find out which breakers, if any, are faulty? I wouldn't want to unnecessarily replace all breakers if they weren't faulty. How can I test my breakers?
Electrical breakers puzzle
circuit breaker
Related Solutions
Since it's a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) breaker, it's very likely that you have a ground fault.
GFCIs work by detecting an imbalance in current between the ungrounded (hot), and grounded (neutral) conductors. This is why you only see the trip when the circuit is under load. If there is 0 current flow, the current is balanced.
I'd start by inspecting the receptacle. Turn off the breaker, then open up the box where the receptacle is installed. Look for damage to the receptacle itself, or water/moisture in the box.
For outdoor installations you should always have a weatherproof box, and a cover that is weatherproof even when the receptacle is in use.
AFCIs are also a bit like GFCIs in that they care a lot about crossed neutrals. A LOT. You will never get any AFCI to hold while a crossed neutral persists, nor should you! Remember, neutrals do not have breakers, the only thing that keeps them from overloading is the fact that they are fed from only one hot. If they are fed by 3 hots, one could return 45A and of course start a fire in the walls.
You will have to identify every outlet (including hardwired ones) on each circuit. Pull the covers off and the devices out. Document how they are wired. It is likely you will uncover the problem at that point.
If not, disconnect them all and light up each circuit, one at a time, to determine which is the "first" outlet. Hook up that outlet correctly (as opposed to how it is now) and test. Continue one at a time, thoroughly testing each time.
When you run out of things to hook up, and you still don't have problems, then you have licked it. Otherwise, the problem will return at a particular step. That is your problem area.
You seem sanguine about some crossed circuits in a 3-way light circuit. That may be one of your problems, and there may not be a legit way to regain original functionality without going to smart switches.
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Best Answer
Here's how you test a breaker
First, you need to get some hard numbers as to the actual load you are putting on the breaker. So get a Kill-a-watt and see what your various loads actually do draw in amps (test them individually).
Now you are looking to test the breaker, not set the wiring in your home on fire, so don't draw this through the house's wiring. Build a little test box out of a 4x4 metal junction box, #10 cable, and 2 twin receptacles, and strip the #10 cable back about a foot. Ground to ground bar, neutral to neutral bar, and hot directly to the breaker under test. Plug all your loads into the receptacles.
OK, you want to test the breaker. Go get the breaker's trip-curve chart.
Look up the amps you will be applying, say it's 40 amps. That's 200% of the breaker rating, so find 200% on the horizontal chart for your breaker (not this example)... and follow the 200% line up to the number of seconds the line enters and exits the "gray area". In this example, it's 9 seconds and 35 seconds.
Turn on your loads and stopwatch... your breaker should trip between 9 and 35 seconds later. (maybe a smidge longer if the load is causing voltage to sag).
That's a thermal trip mode.
The magnetic trip is an instant trip based on high excess current. That is the horizontal blob at the bottom of the chart. Flow 15x rated current and you should get a nice instant magnetic trip inside one AC cycle (<=20ms).