Electrical – Can having a bad grounding situation destroy a circuit breaker

circuit breakerelectricalgrounding

We moved into a home, built a while ago. there are wires hanging and covered in black tape on a chimney.

I bought 2 sconces and put them in place. i did not hook up the ground wire on one of them, the first in series and turned them , they worked, i saw the ground wire was broken, so i cut the wire back and fix it and re-wired it to use the ground wire.

after wiring them up, our circuit breaker on another circuit for the dryer starting popping. We had a dryer repair man come out and test the dryer, it never went over the 17amps to pop the 30 amps circuit breaker, he thinks the circuit breaker is bad.

I thought maybe the work I did for the sconces on ANOTHER circuit may had caused an issue? I have turned off that breaker for the sconces and still the dryer pops the 30 amp circuit breaker.

Best Answer

Sounds to me like a coincidence.

Grounds have nothing to do with the functionality of a circuit breaker. Meaning a circuit will work properly (albeit less safely) with or without a ground. The ground is a "safety backup" in case of a short circuit to metallic parts and pieces.

Hopefully all the work you did on the sconces is proper. Did you install and mount boxes for the wiring and to mount the lights?