Bad Elecrtical Breaker w/new Metal Halies

[che25]

I have a home wiring question:

I live in an old building in San Francisco, built before and survived the 1906 earthquake. In fact, built before buildings where designed for electricity. In fact, there are still old gas lines falling from the light fixtures.

The electrical circuit which runs the reef tank tends to overload and trip. My sense is that adding 2 150 watt MH lights to my reef system is going to place a heavy load on the circuit.

Would adding an new breaker to the panel cure the problem? Or, I'm considering adding a breaker that would be rated 10% higher to the panel. I would like to avoid running extension chords to the tank and I
don't want to burn the building down.

Thanks in advance.

[cowdawg]

Is the tank plugged in to a normal 15 amp breaker? Your 300 watts only pull about 3 amps at 120v so you probably have too much plugged in to the circuit i.e. fridge, microwave... Replacing the breaker to a larger one is prob not a good idea. The breaker is there for a reason. You can add a new 15 amp breaker to your panel, but you'll need to run new wires off of it to a couple new outlets for your tank.

Basically it sounds like you need to take some non-reef amperage off the circuit you are using, or install a new dedicated circuit for the tank. Hope that makes sense.

Oh, and an electrician should do the work for you!

[Firesole]

First off to be absolutely certain, you need to have an electrician come out and verify everything. And make sure it is someone who is licensed and who really does know his ___! You can't afford to have someone who THINKS he knows. By the sound of it, it seems as if you are already at the threshold limit of your current breaker. If it's a standard 15 amp breaker you could possibly bump up to the next size. That's all considering the age, condition, and size of your existing wiring. Certain sizes and material of wire are only rated for a certain amount of current. This is why you need someone who can tell for sure. Adding the lights to your current system will almost certainly overload it. Circuit Breakers are for protection ONLY. they aren't designed for repeated on-offs. This will wear it out and cause it to trip easier or even fail and NOT trip when it is supposed to. Given everything is in good condition and properly rated you could bump up a size but it's kinda frowned upon. Ideally you might want to think about having someone come out and wire you a dedicated circuit for your system. But until then even before the MH lights I would suggest a (as in 1) extension cord to another circuit.

[rjsilvers]

Do NOT add an a bigger breaker to that circuit without an electrician coming out and inspecting the wiring.

You will just be asking for a fire.

[tuckrule]

I would def hire an electrician, but you should know what else is on the breaker by simply noticing what else turns off. Look for big draw items like, fridge, microwave. Window a/c unit. Does it trip when you vacuum?
Also, do no count out that something in you're tank might be faulty and tripping you're breaker. At the very least have the outlet powering you're tank gfi'd. It should be any way. if the gfci trips then you know it is something in you're tank. The fridge should be on its own circuit anyway,as well as the microwave for that matter, but I have seen many cases where it is not.