I got a 100 amp circuit breaker that get real hot and trips. Only thing running off of it is a clothes dryer. Now a hot breaker, does it mean it's getting weak or worse? I felt the cord and the romex and both are at room temp. Lucky something didn't catch fire.

 

I'll take a wild guess here. Is it a Federal Pacific breaker and box you got there.

 

Cutler Hammer. It must be old cause instead of having blades where the breaker connects to the buss bar, it's got little horns that stick up.

 

Seems like I've had a run lately of comin across these old Pacific boxes with bad switches in em. Matter of fact I just bought a bulk lot of breaker switches for these boxes this morning off E-bay just cause they went so cheap and I'll throw em in the truck when I need to change one out here and there.

They will take a good amount of heat but if it's gettin to hot to touch I would deffinately change it out. Just a dryer wouldn't run long enough to really heat anything up. I am admittedly not much of an electrician though, just a switch changer.

 

100A is a little over kill for a dryer I believe.

 

If you're wire is tsill cool, I bet on the bad breaker... all the internals are not engaging and causing high resistance = high heat. Replace it with proper 30A breaker. Is the wire aluminum? Did you check the wire connection for tighness?

 

I recently installed a new plug on account the circuit was hooked into a water heater. Wire was copper.

 

What size wire are you supposed to have for 100amp breaker? I doubt the dryer cord is big enough to handle 100 amps.

Is the circuit being shared with the water heater?

 

30 amps is all you need for a dryer.

 

Just the dryer.