My Water Heater Burst Open (help)

[Spongebob]

You cant always single out an appliance. Most of the time the breakers are about the region of the house, like a wall or room. And nobody is suggesting you do your own repairs. All I said was the safest thing to do is either turn of that one breaker that applies to that wall or unit, or turn off power to the main breaker.

No, you said to turn off the main breaker, you said nothing about turning off the breaker that controls the appliance (which is what SB said - he didn’t say that you could single out an appliance).

Turning off a main breaker to work on a single appliance is just stupid and pointless.

Boru

This is what I was commenting on:

Brian37 wrote:

You cant always single out an appliance. Most of the time the breakers are about the region of the house, like a wall or room. And nobody is suggesting you do your own repairs. All I said was the safest thing to do is either turn of that one breaker that applies to that wall or unit, or turn off power to the main breaker.

If turn off a breaker and check the appliance you are working on, you can be certain that power is off, simple as that.  If another appliance happens to be on that same breaker, then it will be off as well; nothing you can do about that.  Most of your post was about shutting off the main breaker, which could be warranted if you are adding or removing something in a panel.  But if you are just working on one isolated appliance, you only need to shut off power to that device, not the entire panel.  If you turn off the main breaker, you'll be in the dark, which could actually be less safe.