Arc Faul experiences-

[Sierrasparky]

This summer was filled with an unusual amount of jobs that required installations of AFCI Breakers on existing branch circuits.
I have had sever instances where the AFCI would trip as most would consider a Nusiance trip. Upon deep investigation of each and every instance I found faulty wiring. Either a nail, Ground touching nuetral , and on instance a obvious loose connection at a fixture.

All in all they detected things that would not have been found until a bigger problem occured.

I still am not thouroughly convinced though. I see the GFI portion doing the majority of the work. I would bet that the AFCI without GFI protection would miss most of what I found.

Any one else see this.

 

[LEO2854]

This summer was filled with an unusual amount of jobs that required installations of AFCI Breakers on existing branch circuits.
I have had sever instances where the AFCI would trip as most would consider a Nusiance trip. Upon deep investigation of each and every instance I found faulty wiring. Either a nail, Ground touching nuetral , and on instance a obvious loose connection at a fixture.

All in all they detected things that would not have been found until a bigger problem occured.

I still am not thouroughly convinced though. I see the GFI portion doing the majority of the work. I would bet that the AFCI without GFI protection would miss most of what I found.

Any one else see this.

I used a 20AMP AFCI On a temporary circuit in a renovation job, I used GFCI RECEPTACLES at each location I spliced through the boxes and pig tailed the GFCI's the whole job nothing tripped .

On calls where they've been tripping elsewhere , I have found the same problems you have.

 

[GoldDigger]

I used a 20AMP AFCI On a temporary circuit in a renovation job, I used GFCI RECEPTACLES at each location I spliced through the boxes and pig tailed the GFCI's the whole job nothing tripped .

On calls where they've been tripping elsewhere , I have found the same problems you have.

What we really need is for someone to build a good arc fault locator to be used in conjunction with the AFCI. It would be really nice if there were a diagnostic AFCI substitute that actually outputted the details of the AF signature that it thought it detected, for a start.

Not too hard to do for a fault that produces a prompt repeatable AFCI trip every time yo. It is the every couple of days kind that would benefit most from capturing the information.
We now have power quality recorders, how about an AF signature waveform recorder too?

Educational case in point, paraphrased somewhat from an earlier thread:

Customer: "The breaker trips randomly in the middle of the night."
What the customer did not say at first: "Actually, it is every time I microwave a cup of hot milk when I wake up and can't get back to sleep. And it happens as soon as I turn on the microwave. I don't use the microwave for anything else."

 

[Sierrasparky]

Customer: "The breaker trips randomly in the middle of the night."
What the customer did not say at first: "Actually, it is every time I microwave a cup of hot milk when I wake up and can't get back to sleep. And it happens as soon as I turn on the microwave. I don't use the microwave for anything else."

I take that is personal experience

 

[GoldDigger]

I take that is personal experience

Yes, but from a different person.

 

[Sierrasparky]

I get those too. where the customer does not tell what actually happens.
I sort of get this stare of " Intrusion" from them.

All I am trying to do is solve the problem.