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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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!
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.