Electricial Problem With My House & A/C

[HAROLD938]

I lived in a 2 family house that my parent bought in 1973 when they came from ireland

and since then and up to now we never have an electricial problem but until today

i think the stander voltage for an " outlet is 120v i think " and what happen is that i have an A/C

10000 btu i think

in the kitchen and it keep blew out the boxes and i have reset it

and it got to a point i have to take it out now it sit in my back yard for the last 2 and half week and my mom suggested that can i put into my room well what i can tell you is this

i have 2 outlet and i think i ca do a few thing

1.get a heavy duties ext cord that can take the power that the ac generated
2.take out the outlet anf get a heavy duties outlet " which i dont want to do "

so any suggestion will be great

[juppy]

Okay, first of all, neither of those two things you suggested at the end will help. You NEVER want to run something that pulls alot of power off of an extension cord. If the unit pulls too much current, you can overheat the cord and have a fire danger.....even being a heavy duty cord. Replacing the outlet with a heavy duty outlet won't do anything either because the breaker is tripping due to too much current being pulled on that circuit. Changing the outlet won't fix that problem.

It might work in your room just by plugging it in to one of the existing plugs in there, it's hard to tell. Basically you just have to know what appliances are pulling power off of which breaker. If the breaker that is connected to your room doesn't have much else hooked to it, the a/c might work fine. The reason it was tripping the breaker in the kitchen was likely because there was too many things hooked to that one circuit. For instance, say you have a 15 amp breaker supplying the kitchen. If you have several appliances that are pulling close to the limit of that breaker (say 12 or 13 amps), then when you turn on the a/c, it pulls more current than the breaker is made to handle (15 amps) so it trips out to keep the wiring in your house from getting too hot and possibly starting a fire.

So, basically, just try it hooked to the existing plug in your room and if it works, great. If it doesn't then that means there are too many other things on that same breaker that are pulling power at the same time (this is all assuming that the a/c is good and doesn't have some sort of internal wiring problem that's shorting it all out.....because in that case it won't matter where you plug it in, it'll always trip the breaker). If it won't work at any other locations in the house either, it might be time to call in an electrician to maybe add another circuit and some new wiring just for running the a/c.

[jamesrpm]

Best solution is to get an electrician to install a separate circuit for the A/c unit. Some of them can pull up to 20 amps on start up.

[bailey]

it is very possible that the service to the building is not up to todays code and may need to be updated, it sounds like the kitchen is already overloaded without the unit connected,
and you room may be able to run it ok providing that there are not many other used outlets also tied to the same circuit.
NEVER run a extension cord on any major appliance.
turn off the breaker that feeds your room and check what all is dead in the rest of the house, this will tell you what all is on that same circut and give you a idea if it will work or not.
I repeat, NEVER use a extension cord, doing so is asking for a serious problem.

each major applience in the ketchen should be on a circut all by its self, usally there not in a building that age.