Weird electrical issues after power outage?

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chmcke01

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A few days ago a church across the street from us burned down and damaged some electrical and Spectrum stuff. They fixed it pretty quickly but all of our AFCI breakers (with outlets, we have some lights only circuits with AFCI breakers that have had no issues).

The first thing I noticed was the TV in the living room, upon turning it on the breaker would trip right away. I hooked up an extension cord and ran it to a different circuit and had no issues. Then I moved it back an it works sort of now...it still trips the breaker but lasts anywhere from 5 minutes to a couple of hours before it trips the breaker.

The bedroom TV occasionally tripped the breaker in the bedroom but I have used it for several hours with no problems while at other times it trips after a few minutes. We have a dehumidifier and a fish tank on the hallway circuit that was also tripping within minutes of turning on the dehumidifier. We unplugged the dehumidifier and it is still tripping but going several hours between tripping.

So total, 3 breakers tripping (master bedroom, living room, and hallway). So my father in law (who is an electrician, though he mostly does industrial work these days) came over and replaced them for us (which cost a pretty penny I might add, lol).

However, same issues. He then checked the outlets used by all these appliances and didn't see any issues. He did lots of multimeter stuff that I know nothing about but ended up saying that the only thing he can think of is that the fire caused a surge and damaged several of our appliances causing them the breakers to detect an arc fault. However, then we pulled out the vacuum cleaner (which wasn't even plugged in at the time of the fire) and it causes a trip on every AFCI circuit in our house after less than a minute.

He spent a total of like 8 hours at our house and basically he said he had no idea why everything in the house works fine except for a handful of appliances that we have never had issues with (including one not plugged in recently) unless they were somehow damaged in a surge event and said maybe try to find an AFCI specialist.

This house is less than 5 years old (we moved into it soon after it finished construction, around November 2014). I am just really frustrated with this whole situation and financially speaking, less than 2 weeks before Christmas is really a bad time for this to happen. It wouldn't be so bad if it was something like "do x, y, and z to fix it" but I have talked to two electricians in addition to my father in law and after hearing everything I explained here and what we have tried so far the only things that come to mind are the appliances themselves. I am on the verge of just trying to talk my father in law into replacing them with standard breakers.

Any suggestions of things to try?
 

Little Bill

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Staff member
Location
Tennessee NEC:2017
Occupation
Semi-Retired Electrician
I am sorry you are having problems with the AFCI breakers. They are an "animal all their own". They are a required item that, IMO, are not a proven item. They are all kinds of things that can trip them and not really anything wrong with the items, such as treadmills, vacuum cleaners, etc.
We can't really offer any advise because of Forum rules, which won't allow us to help anyone not related to the electrical industry. I would suggest you search for a qualified residential electrician that may be of help to you.
With that said, I am closing this thread.
 
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