Homeline breakers?

I need an education on Homeline breakers. Menards had in a Homeline bin, some slim, 2 pole (really double) breakers. They say type homt. Fine. I will save some box space and use some of these. Everything looks right. I go to put it in, and it won't seat all the way down. What the! I see what the difference is. The slot in the back is less deep than the normal single or double pole Homeline breakers. What the heck is this thing? And do they make a slim 220V breaker (two poles tied)? I'm feeling a little dumb on these now. We found the double slims for a friends Square D box yesterday.

I am not familiar with those breakers.

I am not an electrician though I worked with dear hubby to build our breakers box/panel.

My thought is that those breakers are not the right size or brand for you breaker box and/or panel.

I hope some of our electricians will speak up with the proper info.

It depends on the age of the panel accepting these. The HOMT tandem breakers are incompatible with older SquareD panels in which the primary bus bars are not sized for the amperage that an all-tandems installation could conceivably create. Sounds like yours is not compatible, sorry.

If you ever have a couple breakers out at the same time, look at how the busbars interleave, and it will be clear why there can never be a single pole 220V tandem breaker. Each busbar carries 110V  but they are out of phase. 220V (or 240V, depends on your mains) comes from referencing the two busbars against each other, so any 220V circuit has to tap both busbars. A tandem breaker as you describe only taps one busbar. However, you can get quad breakers, those give you 4 outputs, and can indeed give you 2x 220V outputs from 2 spaces in the panel (if properly ganged), but you will see these advertised as quads, not tandems.

Best,
Mark

First of all, those slim two-pole breakers are not suitable for 220V circuits. They will both be on the same phase and any 220V appliance needs two different phases to work properly. They are intended to save panel space and run two separate 120V circuits, like for lighting in two different rooms. The double breaker should fit into a single breaker space. As stated above, they may not be compatible with your panel. If you have an older panel, that these breakers were not made to fit, they are useless to you. See if you can return them. Access the Homeline/Square D website and find your panel model number. The website should have the info on whether they make a single-space two-pole breaker for it.

Aside: I understand the essentials in many technical fields; that's how I make my living. But it's really cool that folks with direct knowledge hang out here and can offer advice on specific systems. Can you imagine this conversation on reddit? Barf bag festival. Cheers all.

1. There are a few different styles of breakers. Whatever brand of breaker you buy has to match your electrical panel. (homeline makes electrical panels, so those homeline breakers may only fit into homeline panels. Why it's not standardized......who knows?)

2. There are 2 110V wires (phases) and a neutral (0V) wire that come into your box. The box is arranged such that every other 110V breaker is on every other 110V line. Think of the 110V sources as line A and line B-the breakers are arranged ABABABAB on down. So, if you install a full size double breaker that connects to both lines, you get 220V (110V+110V). That's why there's no slimline 220 breaker-the breaker has to be big enough to connect to 2 spots in the electrical panel.

mubashir ansari wrote:I need an education on Homeline breakers. Menards had in a Homeline bin, some slim, 2 pole (really double) breakers. They say type homt. Fine. I will save some box space and use some of these. Everything looks right. I go to put it in, and it won't seat all the way down. What the! I see what the difference is. The slot in the back is less deep than the normal single or double pole Homeline breakers. What the heck is this thing? And do they make a slim 220V breaker (two poles tied)? I'm feeling a little dumb on these now. We found the double slims for a friends Square D box yesterday.

It is not you...

But the load centers or breaker boxes only allow these breakers on the BOTTOM THIRD of the load box. More than likely you tried to put the split breaker above this point and it simply won't fit... it lacks the notch in the buss bar! It will fit however if you swap breakers around and get your split breaker on the lower end of the load box.

I hope the original poster will come back and let us know how he solved his problem back in 2025.

To clarify: SquareD is a manufacturer of electrical panels, Homeline is one of their “lines” or “models”. I use the analogy of cars: SquareD is to Toyota as Homeline is to Camry.

And I chose that analogy in particular because SquareD makes solid, reliable equipment that is also among the most affordable on the market (compared to e.g. Eaton, GE, etc.) and the Homeline line of panels and breakers is less expensive but just as good as their QO line (by analogy, QO is like the Lexus ES300). And best of all, these products are usually the easiest to find because they are sold everywhere. We (my boss and I) try to install SquareD Homelines whenever we are doing a new install, both for the customer’s benefit and for ours as service electricians.

Your breakers must match your panel!

Ned Harr wrote:

Your breakers must match your panel!

They do, but don't despair if you find your place as an old or obscure load box... EBay is your friend. There is a whole sub-culture out there where breakers for these old or obscure load boxes can be found. It is a lot less expensive to wait a few days for an old or obscure breaker to arrive in the mail then have a load center swapped out because a breaker cannot be found at the local box store for it.

As I asked one electrician friend, 'what do you do with the old breakers when you swap out a new load center, and he said, 'throw them away".

What a shame, on the used market those old breakers are worth a lot of money. So if you do put in a new load center or sub panel, be sure to save the breakers and sell them. They have a lot of value and with internet searches today, those that have them can find those that need them readily.