Oh, well, you switch off half the fuses, then you go check the wire.
Let’s say the wire still has power on it, so now you know that none of the fuses in that half affected it (which you can turn back on now).
Then you do the same thing again with the other half of the fuses, i.e. you switch off half of the fuses in that half and go check the wire.
Now, let’s say the wire is dead, so now you know that the fuse you want is in this quarter.
So, then you flick off half of the fuses in that quarter and check the wire again, and so on.
With every step, you eliminate half of the remaining fuses, so for 60 fuses, you need at most 6 steps (which is the logarithm for base 2 of 60).
Once you figure out which one it is, label it! I labeled all the breakers in my panel when I moved in to my house, as half of the existing labels were wrong (no idea why).
Why are so many mislabeled though? It’s not like the loads are being changed every day. I had two breakers labeled “dishwasher” and neither of them were the dishwasher!
Electrical work is one of those things that’s not difficult to do as long as you don’t mind it being some level of wrong but relatively hard to do 100% to code right without training. With most of the wrong ways, the project still works, but it’s dangerous and/or hard to maintain. Professional work is expensive, so you end up with a LOT of handyman work that’s poorly labeled, poorly run, poorly designed or some combination of the three.
My best guess would be that at some point, running the dishwasher tripped the breaker. They had space so they added a breaker below it and moved the line to the new breaker. Then it still tripped, so they moved the line at the dishwasher circuit that was already close by.
Either the original line has a fault in it (old aluminum lines can have junction issues over time) or the dishwasher had a short in it, and they either replaced the dishwasher, or the new line they chose didn’t fail.
I keep a spreadsheet with every outlet/light in every room on it and their corresponding breakers. Much easier since breakers often span multiple rooms, sometimes only powering one or two fixtures in each.
Binary search requires splitting the search space into two halves, then asking “is it in that half?”
Normally the “is it in that half?” check involves a numerical comparison: test value versus target value. “higher or lower” here gets you to “is it in that half?”
So finding the midpoint seems like a core part of the process, but really that’s just a shortcut in the case of comparable values, that helps you split into two and check membership.
I admit I couldn’t think of that either: just alter half the items and check for effect.
Oh, well, you switch off half the fuses, then you go check the wire.
Let’s say the wire still has power on it, so now you know that none of the fuses in that half affected it (which you can turn back on now).
Then you do the same thing again with the other half of the fuses, i.e. you switch off half of the fuses in that half and go check the wire.
Now, let’s say the wire is dead, so now you know that the fuse you want is in this quarter.
So, then you flick off half of the fuses in that quarter and check the wire again, and so on.
With every step, you eliminate half of the remaining fuses, so for 60 fuses, you need at most 6 steps (which is the logarithm for base 2 of 60).
Once you figure out which one it is, label it! I labeled all the breakers in my panel when I moved in to my house, as half of the existing labels were wrong (no idea why).
That’s the case with virtually every breaker box.
Why are so many mislabeled though? It’s not like the loads are being changed every day. I had two breakers labeled “dishwasher” and neither of them were the dishwasher!
I have only six circuits and both of my recent electricians checked and labelled each circuit. I must have had good luck in sparkies
Electrical work is one of those things that’s not difficult to do as long as you don’t mind it being some level of wrong but relatively hard to do 100% to code right without training. With most of the wrong ways, the project still works, but it’s dangerous and/or hard to maintain. Professional work is expensive, so you end up with a LOT of handyman work that’s poorly labeled, poorly run, poorly designed or some combination of the three.
My best guess would be that at some point, running the dishwasher tripped the breaker. They had space so they added a breaker below it and moved the line to the new breaker. Then it still tripped, so they moved the line at the dishwasher circuit that was already close by.
Either the original line has a fault in it (old aluminum lines can have junction issues over time) or the dishwasher had a short in it, and they either replaced the dishwasher, or the new line they chose didn’t fail.
What Rumba said. Why full ass a job when half is plenty.
I keep a spreadsheet with every outlet/light in every room on it and their corresponding breakers. Much easier since breakers often span multiple rooms, sometimes only powering one or two fixtures in each.
Ah, obvious now, thank you. For some reason
myhis brain couldn’t get to actually turning off half the breakers in one goBinary search requires splitting the search space into two halves, then asking “is it in that half?”
Normally the “is it in that half?” check involves a numerical comparison: test value versus target value. “higher or lower” here gets you to “is it in that half?”
So finding the midpoint seems like a core part of the process, but really that’s just a shortcut in the case of comparable values, that helps you split into two and check membership.
I admit I couldn’t think of that either: just alter half the items and check for effect.