Switch keeps tripping and shutting everything down.?

Question

Having trouble with the power kicking out. Seems to happen when I run the dryer and washer together. I just washed clothes and no problem. Is my dryer acting up. Got it new 7 yrs ago. The home is new, too, as it is a mobile home and haven't had problems, except the cat sprayed into an outlet and the electrician will be out to install a new outlet thing. It knocked out the juice to the backroom and the front light and table light in LR. Any advice? I keep thinking it's the dryer.

Answer 1

try running your dryer on its own and if it's fine you have a load problem. the circuit breaker you run the 2 items on is to small and needs to be increased if tte wir is big enough to carry more of a load

Answer 2

I had a similar problem with my hot water heater.  A  new breaker fixed it right up.

Answer 3

Might be the dryer, might be a bad breaker, might be a problem with an overloaded circuit. Call the electrician that's coming out to fix the outlet and tell him/her what the brand of switches you've got in your breaker box, and that you need him/her to look at the circuit for you.

FWIW, when a conventional motor starts up, it takes 3x the amount of current as when the motor is actually running.  Get two  motors kicking on together and you get major local power drop.  The cheapest fix may be to run the washer and dryer separately.