Conundrum

 

That is a look at a normal home breaker box  without the breakers.  The breakers that would be installed look something like these:

The two "Hot" busbars are arranged so that the wires attached to the double breaker on the right would carry 240 volts, and the single breaker would handle 120.  Anytime a single breaker is installed in the box, the breaker directly above or below it would be getting its power from the other leg of the 240 volt input.

Last Friday evening, during a thunderstorm, we had a nearby lightning strike that took out our phone, our air conditioner, our microwave and all the wall plugs in our living room.  I went out and tried to reset the breakers without any luck.

Early Saturday morning, our contractor sent his electrician over, and after an hour or so he had everything back up and running.  He told me that the problem was with two of our 120 volt breakers.  Both breakers were OK, but whenever he reset one, the other would pop.  If he reversed the sequence, the same thing happened, just in reverse. He said the solution was moving one wire from one of the shared circuits from one breaker to the other.

Neither breaker was pulling too much amperage before the switch, and they had been working fine wired that way for years.  I still have no idea why swapping that wire solved the problem, but it's hard to argue with success.

The only thing that wire change didn't fix was the phone.  The lightning fried the circuits in the phone and it had to be replaced.