When will someone invent a proper fuse that doesn't?

[fjm]

We got home last night to find the house fused. I went to bed, E and my Dad looked at it and decided to sort it in the morning. At 5:30am I got up to finish my talk and realised: aargh! No internet, no way to charge my phone to use it to look up things, low power on computer..... whimper

Comments

[miramon]

We got our fuse box replaced with circuit breakers (on the advice of a local electrician) soon after we bought this house. Flicking a switch is a lot easier than replacing a fuse, but they do seem trip more easily.

[fjm]

A metaphor. It is a circuit breaker but I am Old. And the damn thing *kept* tripping.

[nojay]

Something on that circuit has blown to short and needs to be unplugged or disconnected. Or was this the main breaker (almost typed "master breaker" there...)? We have a diagram next to the flat's distribution box showing which individual breaker feeds which set of power points and lights, it makes fault-finding a bit easier when one does trip.

[miramon]

We had something like this. One of the lights was over loaded. It had 5 40W bulbs and for some reason the circuit wouldn't take it and all the downstairs lights would go out every couple of weeks. When we replaced the bulbs with 5W fluorescents, it suddenly stopped tripping.

[del_c]

Second this from my own experience. I had actual fuses, replaced them with circuit breakers because a 100W incandescent was blowing them. That made the problem quicker to fix, but the tripping still happened. Replaced the incandescents with compact fluorescents, never tripped again.