Replies

1. 
   OneofmanyBobs | Dec 22, 2003 11:57pm | #1

   Yes.  Has a little reset pin in the center. 

2. 
   VaGentinMI | Dec 23, 2003 12:05am | #2

   Carry ur old fuse into a WELL stocked hardware store, or good elect. supply house. Blowes & Home Decrept prob wont have. Let them match it up.

3. 
   4Lorn2 | Dec 25, 2003 06:47am | #3

   If this panel has the old Edison base fuses, a standards light bulb fits and all amp ratings fit in all holders, the panel is so old your probably better off having the panel replaced. At the very least get 'S type' conversion plugs so that the fuses are not interchangeable. 'S' fuses have different base diameters so a 30A fuse cannot be screwed into a hole connected to #14 wire.

   Installing the conversion plugs isn't hard, you screw them onto the properly sized 'S' fuse and screw it into the Edison shell, but you best triple check each placement because once one is screwed in it takes a virtual act of congress to get one out. I was told it was 'impossible' to remove but just had to try. I removed a couple but it was slow tedious, delicate work that took more than an hour per plug.

   Any good electrical supply house should carry everything you need but I have also seen the Edison base fuse, 'S' conversion plugs and 'S' fuses at both big box hardwares in this area.

4. 
   Heatherington | Dec 25, 2003 07:14am | #4

   I do believe in "S" type fuses. I have installed many where I came across over fusing.

   A point made by a guy from Bussman Fuse has stuck in my mind for decades. How many parts are there in a circuit breaker? How many moving parts? Do homeowner "exercise" their circuit breakers every year, as the manufacturer sugest? OK, now how many moving parts are there in a fuse?

   Fuses work, every time, and decades later.

   Yep, I'm an old geezer, and not too sure that all this new-fangled stuff is really better. 

1. 
   4Lorn2 | Dec 25, 2003 08:30am | #5

   something to what you say. Fuses are for all practical purposes fail safe. Highly reliable. Problem being that they are expendable, one use only items. If you run out it invites a rouges gallery of innovative techniques. Too often I have seen, washers, pennies, wads of wire or relanding of the circuit onto the mains.

   When you see a circuit run in #14 hooked directly onto a lug ahead of the main fuse block, to be fused only by the utilities fuse on the line side of the service transformer, it sort of defines 'overfused' and dangerous. Something like 1000 short-circuit amps, limited only by the impedance of the transformer and the wires, available on a 70 year old run of #14.

   A HO lacking a fuse and armed only with a screwdriver, a determination to get power to run his TV and completely unburdened by any common sense, realistic fear or electrical knowledge can greatly expand the bounds of high-risk improvisation. They can be both wildly creative and staggeringly bold.

   The HO with a breaker equipped panel need not be quite so imaginative.