Not too much off-topic, I hope...
>
>Here's my problem. I have a quadruplex. For each of the three
>appartments we don't occupy, we have metal box containing a switch and
>two 100A/250V fuses. The output of this box goes to the breaker box
>located within the appartment.
>
>The tenant came to me and complained about a problem. The most
>consuming elements weren't working (washing machine, dryer, microwave
>oven, etc...).. the lights were on, but not at their full
>capacity. After some research, I found out that one of the two above
>mentioned fuses of his appartment was dead. It looked like it
>had overheated. I therefore bought a new one and replaced it. An hour
>or two after, I went back to look at it and it was heating, much more
>than the fuses for the other appartments.
>
>To find out if the problem was in my metal box or in my tenant's
>electrical circuits, I went over and shut down every single breaker he
>had (don't worry, he's gone for the weekend! ;-). My metal box was
>back at normal temperature (cold) after a few hours.
>
>My questions:
>
>1- Why two 100A fuses in parallel instead of one 200A?
>
>2- What could be the problem? I would doubt it to be related to my
>tenant's electrical consumption, since his breaker would pop before my
>fuses would break, right? It's been this way since our 4plex was built
>20 years ago and weve never had this kind of problem.
>
>Many thanks,
>
>
>
>Patrick M.