Pollak Circuit Breaker - 150 Amp - Surface Mount - Manual Reset - Plastic - Type III

Video Transcript for Pollak Manual Reset Circuit Breaker Review

Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today, we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install the line of Pollak manual reset circuit breakers. So the circuit breaker is a small, but really important component to your electrical system. What it's gonna do is protect the accessory that you're powering. So you can use these for just about anything really. As long as it's a 12 volt system, this will keep it protected.

And whether it be a plow, a winch, a lift gate, whatever the case may be, this will keep everything squared away. Now, I like to kind of compare these to the circuit breakers in your house. Everyone's familiar with them and I'm sure at some point or another has experienced a circuit breaker tripping. So think at the house, if you have a bunch of stuff plugged in and finally you turn one more thing on and power trip set circuit breaker. What that did is keep everything protected and possibly prevent a fire.

If you're overloading the circuit or it has a short or anything like that, and you keep power going to it, it's only gonna get worse. That power generates heat and can cause a lot of issues. And with the circuit breaker, that's something you're not gonna have to worry about. If there is an electrical issue, what it's gonna do is trip that breaker and prevent the power from continuing on. So the way it works is your power supply goes in through one side of the breaker.

There's a contact in there that allows that power to transfer over to the other side of the breaker into the accessory. Well, that contact is going to a more or less run on heat if that makes sense, because when current passes through it, it does generate heat. And depending on the size of the breaker or the amperage rating, if there's an issue it's gonna generate more heat and it's gonna surpass the threshold of that contact. And when that contact gets too hot, it's gonna break the circuit and not allow power to travel through. This one is a manual reset.

So if that we're to happen, you can visibly see, come back here, oh yeah, the breaker's tripped and it's not going to reset unless you physically reset it. So that has some advantages and disadvantages. There are circuit breakers that automatically reset. So this portion won't be here. And once that cools down and off the breaker, again will be a complete circuit and power can flow through. With the manual reset, you are gonna have to come back here and click it in, but at the same time too, it also gives you the opportunity to cut power and be able to take a deeper look at what's going on. Maybe, if you have that electrical issue, you know that you're not gonna have power to it and you can kind of try to diagnose it right there. So has its pluses and minuses, and overall just a really nice setup. So circuit breakers are going to have a different amperage ratings, and there is a few ways to figure out which one will work best with your setup. One of the ways is a lot of times whenever you're trying to power up is going to have information on it. Kind of suggesting you what size breaker to use or how many amps it's going to draw. Another way to figure that out is just contact the manufacturer themselves. Nine times out of 10 they're gonna be able to kind of point you in the right direction and tell you how many amps set a particular product draws. And kind of the worst case scenario, you may have to just figure it out on your own and you can use what's called an amp meter and measure the amperage of that set accessory so when you power it on, you'll be able to read how many amps that is, and then you can choose the circuit breaker that is the best match. So it kind of just to give a quick comparison. Here is the buyer's product, our circuit breaker. And they're very, very similar to be honest. I wouldn't really prefer one over the other. I feel like they do just as good as a job and are just as well-built. However, I will say the Buyers does have one advantage. This one, the Pollak is rated for 12 volts and the Buyers is rated for up to 42 volts. So I know some systems, some electrical systems run on voltage higher than 12. And if that's your case this would definitely be the solution for you. So at the end of the day, something that'll help put your mind at ease and is a great addition or even replacement to your current setup. So before we actually hook up our circuit breaker, I figured we'd just kind of take a look at it how it comes right out of the box. And I will say, even though it is made from plastic, it is really solid, feels like it's well-built and the trip mechanism here does feel good. There's some tension there to push down on it and it operates smoothly. So I feel like if you we're to barely kind of bump into this or something, you're probably not gonna have to worry about tripping it. So it does take a little bit of effort. If you look at the top portion here, there's a seal that runs along that edge area and that's what helps keep it waterproof. And so that runs all the way around each side. And really just some of the small things too. It comes with these taps that go over the studs, that way it kind of keeps them protected. And if something happens to bump into it or anything like that, I shouldn't have to worry about any issues there. And each stud is actually labeled auxiliary and on the other side is battery. So it makes it super simple once you know what side of your wires you need to hook up. So this will go right to the battery or power source, and this would go to your accessory. But with all that being said, this is really straightforward and easy to hook up. So why don't we go ahead and put it on together now. So to begin your installation, you're first going to want to disconnect your power supply. So in our case, we have a disconnect switch. I turn that off and we're gonna want to find a spot to mount this. Preferably closer to the power source, the better. So we're right here in this battery compartment, and today we're actually installing this on a boat for some of the accessories. I just happened to grab the 150 amp version of our circuit breaker, which is definitely overkill. But for demonstration purposes, we're just gonna go ahead and hook this one up. I'll keep in mind, there's different sizes available. So you wanna make sure to pair what'd you got correctly. And with that being said, these are all gonna hook up the same way. So this is kind of just a reference and should get you going in the right direction. But with that being said, we get our power off, we are here next to our batteries. So I'm gonna be mounting our breaker right here in this area. And what I've done is just pre drilled, a couple of holes there. And I did that because I'm using aluminum self-tapping screws. So those are kind of tricky to get to kind of punch through. Since this material here I'm drilling into is aluminum, I suggest using these aluminum screws. If you've got steel, regular ones we'll work too. The mounting hardware does not come included so you will have to pick that up separately. And we've got self-tappers here at etrailer. And keep in mind when you're doing this, since the battery source goes to one stud and your accessory goes to the other we wanna orientate correctly. So here's our power supply, here's the wire that goes to our accessory. And so just keep that in mind when you're mountain this up. What I like to do is remove the nuts first. Sometimes these can be lost pretty easily if you drop it or something like that. So let's not mount it up. I'll take those off first, send them to the side somewhere safe, and then go ahead and get my self-tapping screws kinda started in there, and then we'll tightened up. So once we have them snug, just gonna take our ring terminal from our battery, slide that over the battery stud, we'll get our nut on hand tight. And if you happen to need any of these ring terminals or wiring or anything like that, we do carry that here at etrailers. So you can grab those components as well if you need them. We'll take our wire coming from our accessories, put that over the other post, and we'll get this nut started as well. Once we have both of them on there and hand tight, come back and snug them up. Now that everything's connected, not a bad idea to turn our power supply back on and just run a quick test to make sure everything's working properly. Then we can just try to turn on one of our accessories and make sure it powers up. So here at our switch panel, if you go ahead, turn the main switch on. You can see that we have voltage and our charger lights are illuminating. We activate the rest of our switch panel. You can see that they all light up. So in our case, everything is working properly. And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the line of Pollak manual reset circuit breakers..