I rent a 3 bedroom house with, all together, 7 rooms. When I'm using the AC in one room I can't used it a other room. If I use it, I lose power for the whole house. When I check the breaker panel, there are 6-7 breaker switches in there, but only 1 breaker switch keeps on switching off the whole house. Does that mean the whole house is wired to the 1 switch, is that safe?
By Kiven
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Get the landlord in there now. You have an overloaded breaker box and the landlord (in nearly all states) is responsible for making sure you have the legally required amps to run your household without fire hazard.
Insufficient amperage is a fire hazard. Overloaded circuitry and breaker boxes are a fire hazard. Fire will kill you and your loved ones!
If your landlord (as many will do) shrugs off your concerns and doesn't act in a timely fashion to remedy this, you may want to consider moving out-document everything in case you decide to try recovering your costs.
Although this is the landlord's responsibility, you are the one living in the house. Call the landlord, and insist that he call an electrician. If he doesn't get one there in a day or two, get one in yourself. Document all this, so that if there is work that needs to be done, and your landlord doesn't get it done, and you end up paying for it, you will have documents to prove all this, and you may be able to get reimbursed from small claims court or a provincial or state housing regulator - whatever may be in place wherever you live.
An air conditioner uses a lot of power, but one breaker shouldn't shut off all the power in a house, unless it is a main breaker. I used to have such a thing -- a switch that shut off all the power in my house trailer. However, it is hard to know what you have in your house. It sounds like a job for an electrician, asap.
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