AC Power Question....

Ok, Im living in a 30+ year old house and between my roommates computers, my computers, and the entertainment system downstairs we randomly blow breakers when too many things get turned on at once... My question is, Is there a way I can measure each circuit too see how much is being drawn on it so I can move things from overloaded ones to lesser used ones? Thanks!

Yes. They're called clamp-on ammeters. You put the hoop of the meter around the hot lead at the breaker and it'll tell you how much current is flowing through it. They're pricy, though.

Actually, Amazon has one for $30. (Search for "clamp meter".)

It may be a little bit of work, but the best device I know of is to get a clamp-on ammeter (it has jaws that form a hollow circle), take the cover off your breaker panel, and then clamp the meter around the hot wire from each breaker to measure the current in amps on each circuit while stuff is powered on.

As you're probably aware, it's nice to have a little bit of extra current "margin" on the circuit so that you can plug in something else temporarily without blowing the breaker.

You may have to install new circuits that are dedicated to the computers and other equipment. If you do that, Leviton makes a very nice "Whole house" surge suppressor that can be attached to your breaker panel. It would provide some good surge protection for about $150 for every electric device in the house. Then you don't have to buy surge suppressors for every item in the house that you want to protect...It takes a bit of work to install it, but it is worth it...

Randy

On HomeDepot's site I found :
"IDEAL 4-in-1 200 Amp Test Tool Model 61-702"
Would this be what you guys are refering too?

The plan is to run dedicated circuits but in the mean time I wanted to distribute the load a bit.. cause as it is now we have no margin.. We have like one outlet in the entire house we can plug the vaccuum into.. I really need to figure out every outlet is on what breaker also that would probobly help as well..My dad mentioned that lighting circuits normally use 15amp breakers and outlet circuits use 20amp but from what he recalls uses the same guage wire.. About a year ago most of the breakers where switched to 15amp from what I was told.. Is what my dad mentioned correct? Could we upgrade them to 20's and be ok? Or since how old the wires are should they be left at 15? As for the house surge protector that would be cool but considering we have like 3 ups units and surge protectors everywhere I think we should be ok that way, will mention it though and see how hard it would be to put something like that in here. Thanks for the replies!

Something else you may want to look at is the breaker. Most houses came with poor quality GE or Cutler-Hammer (or any number of other brands) that are overly sensitive. My house is an older one with too few circuits and had GE breakers. My loads seemed to be almost within limits, but still I had a lot of tripping. I changed out the breakers to all Square-D brand and most of the tripping problems went away.

I engineer fountains for a living and Square-D is the only ground fault breaker one can put the load 500 feet away and not have it trip.