Portable heaters trip power breakers HomeImprovement

In our house we have three small portable heaters, two old Holmes HFH105 and a new Lasko 754200. One in each bedroom. We make sure only one is ever on at a time, because when two are on at the same time, the breaker for the circuit they're on trips and we lose power for all the receptacles after about a minute of two being on at the same time.

I'm not sure if this is normal or if other people normally can have a couple of these kinds of heaters (or anything that is similar in power draw) on at the same time without problems. So I want to know if this is to be expected or if there is an issue with the electrical work somewhere. The house is about 50 years old, a little less probably.

All the outlets for our three adjacent rooms and two bathrooms are on the same circuit since when this problem occurs and the breaker trips, whatever is connected to outlets in our rooms turn off. However, our bedroom ceiling lights are on a different breaker, since when this happens the lights stay on in the rooms, but the bathroom lights do turn off. This must mean that the outlets in all five rooms (three bedrooms, two bathrooms) and the bathroom lights are on the same breaker, while the three bedroom lights are on a separate breaker. Now that I remember, all the appliances in the living room and kitchen also turn off when this happens, including the "built in" microwave and range (and the refrigerator must too, but I have not opened it to confirm if it was off when this happens). So along with all the bedroom and bathroom outlets and lights, the living room and kitchen outlets share the same circuit and breaker.

I don't know if this is usually how electrical is set up, or if that kind of circuit would put too much load, and that two of these heaters are just enough to overload it. In the breaker box, the breaker that usually is the one that is tripped is a double/tandem breaker in which both switches are connected with a piece of hardware so that both switch at the same time. I don't know if it would help, but when we we gutted and remodeled the bathrooms and other things, the kitchen ceiling lights didn't want to work and the illuminated light switches in the kitchen would not work (as in, the backlight would not turn on or would flicker, but the actual switch would turn lights on and off fine), and they still flicker even though they were never altered or worked on at all. At the same time, a worker told us all out electrical had to be redone because the transformers in the attic were going bad, which was causing these power issues with the lights and switches I mentioned right before this. I didn't even know we had transformers in the attic or that people have them in their house; is he full of it or is this something to also look into?

Any help is appreciated.

Submitted January 14, 2016 at 10:19AM by DarkDubzs http://ift.tt/1RmGxWL HomeImprovement