Electrical – Rough-in Inspection of Existing/New Circuit Breaker

Breakers are supposed to be good for a fairly large number of triggers, and they are supposed to fail open when they fail. Is there a chance that you were running at a heavier overall load when the second incident occurred? I'm thinking that if you were say within 10 amps of max on the main breaker just due to normal load (air conditioners, perhaps?), and caused a short on the secondary (a 15 amp circuit, perhaps), you might have triggered the main to trip first by simply overloading it, before the secondary could draw enough to trip.

If you really think the secondary might be bad, then by all means replace it, but no, you don't have to replace the main just because it tripped. As long as it feels normal when you move it back into position (flip some other breakers to see how they feel - there shouldn't be any slop in the movement), you'll be fine.

The last several times I've seen breakers fail they've all failed open.

This seems to be relatively common especially with older homes.

If your basement is not finished then this might not be that large of a job. If the basement is finished it makes this a lot harder and you will definitely be making holes in walls/ceilings.

The first thing you need to figure out is what exactly you are going to split. Most locations requires dedicated 20amp circuits to each recepticle in the kitchen, so instead of trying to break up a number of other circuits, it'd probably be easiest just to run new dedicated circuits for the kitchen. You do need to be aware that it is not always permissible to have multiple circuits running in the same electrical box, so you could probably make it even easier by running brand new outlets instead of trying to change existing ones.

Installing a new breaker and outlet is not that difficult, but safety always comes to mind with electrical, so if you are not sure you could opt to have an electrician do the whole thing, or if you just want peice of mind, you could get them to inspect your work upon completion.

As always, make sure to turn the power off when working in your electrical panel. I know a lot of people will pop in breakers with the power on, but I prefer to have my hands nowhere near live electricity.

Good luck!