How to Label Your Circuit Breakers

 

An essential aspect of home ownership is an understanding of your electrical system. You don’t have to be particularly familiar with the inner complexities of the wiring, but at the very least you should know which areas of your home are serviced by which circuit, so that in the event of an electrical emergency you can shut off the power (or turn it back on if a surge has caused power to shut off.) How many times have you fumbled in your electrical panel because the power shut off unexpectedly and you didn’t know which switch would restore it?
With an hour and a little help, you can label your circuit breakers clearly and never have such a problem again.

To do this, you will need:

• A pen and paper
• A friend
• An electrical panel

There are a few different ways of going about it, and you can choose the option that will work best for you.

• You can turn on all the lights/appliances in your home and then switch each breaker off in turn, making a note of which lights/appliances turn off each time
• You can turn off all the circuits breakers at once, then turn each one on in turn and make a note of which lights/appliances turn on.

Either way, you will need to station one person at the panel and one person who can wander throughout the house to find the area affected by each circuit. As you figure out each area, write down which light switches/receptacles are affected for each area. It is helpful to use designations like “bedroom”, “bathroom”, “outlets on north wall”, but don’t get too specific (“washing machine”, “entertainment center”), because eventually you may move your appliances around and there will be the potential for confusion.

When you are finished cataloging the circuits, you can easily write them into a directory like this, secure it to the inside of the panel door, and you’re good to go!

Other Things to Consider:

• If a breaker does not turn anything off or on, or if certain sections do not seem to belong to any one breaker, it may indicate miswiring. Call an electrician to investigate the issue.
• Your panel may have some double breakers- these control appliances that require a higher amount of power (240v) to run (water pumps, electric heaters, subpanels). Make sure that any double circuits you have are not feeding power to a subpanel elsewhere in your home. If they are, you need to check and label that panel as well.
• If there is any other indication that something is going wrong in your panel (strong smell, smoke, sparks, buzzing sound, tripping too frequently or not when it should), don’t take any risks! Call an electrician to take care of the problem.

Share your $0.02! Have you labeled your own circuit breakers, or had an experience in which you realized you needed to label them?