Today’s inspection: A Cutler Hammer 200 amp panel with a quirk. the breaker to the range was off, unmistakable. The power to the range was ON! the stove heated up normally. I traced the wire directly from the breaker to the stove three times to make sure I didn’t miss something.
Anyone else have any similar experiences?
Tell me how you traced a wire from the breaker to the stove? You pulled the range out from the wall? I would NEVER do that. My first reaction is that you made a mistake in identifying the “off” breaker as being that for the range. Perhaps it was for a furnace?
The wire was exposed from the panel to the stove. The basement was unfinished. I was able to identify the wire every inch of the way. No mistake.
Well if you’re certain it sounds like a bad breaker. Write it up. I’ve never see that but I don’t flip a lot of breakers.
I have never seen it either… I was quit puzzled, and still am a bit. Can anyone shed insight on how a breaker might show “off” while being “on”? This could be important to anyone working on this.
Yes I have seen them burnt/fused together and was taught to never assume a breaker is off until tested with something beside your tounge;-)
Now you tell me that I have been checking things all wrong 
I came across a GTE Sylvania a couple days ago had the breaker for the a/c in the off position and the a/c was cooling like a champ. Was my first time running into this as well.
Bert
Sounds like a previous post from the Pope where meter was bypassed…
Breakers fail in several different ways, the most common being either failure to open, failure to close, or nuisance tripping. In industry, failure to open is a fairly common issue.
Breakers contain a moving contact, a thermal/magnetic mechanism, a trip lever, and connecting linkage. The situation you describe is a failure to open and is typically caused by the internal contact welding shut, but could also be caused by a failure in the trip lever or any part of the connecting linkage.
As I am sure you are already aware, the breaker should be replaced immediately due to the fact it may not be able to clear a fault.
I hope this answers your question.