Quote Originally Posted by TheSparkens View Post
Replacement will fix it all. I would not use an electrician that installs a new breaker of that size on that size of wire.
The new breaker was my doing but it was replacing that old 100A that kept tripping. No tripps yet but we'll see over the next few days, from 2 - 3 a day, this has been an improvement so far.

Serious question here, does the size of the breaker actually make any difference in this case? I'd already installed the 50A before I read your post about installing a 30A so I left it, but I'd really like to understand this piece and I can easily swap it for a 30A if needed.

With everything plugged in and every light on it doesn't even hit 10A load during startup of things like the garage door opener and TV and the constant load is MUCH lower. Given that the panel this is feeding has 2 X 15A and 1 X 20A, if something was to suddenly pull a much higher load shouldn't it trip one of those breakers first? Given what's running off the panel, I can't see a scenario where the combined load would exceed 40A (135%) or 60A (200%) of the 30A breaker. I understand redundancy, is the reason for the 30A also based on the shorter allowable trip time vs the 50A?

I measured today and it's about 50' from panel to panel so probably 60 - 70 total, depending on how it's run.