All arc faults tripping

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crtemp

Senior Member
Location
Wa state
I have a house I wired and now the customer says all of the arc faults breakers are tripping. At least the ones with motor loads. The dishwasher, disposal, Hoodfan, microwave and refrigerator all trip them. What is also weird is the homeowner says if he plugs the disposal into a surge protector it won't trip. Any ideas? Could it be from a loose connection on the utilities end?
 

peter d

Senior Member
Location
New England
I have a house I wired and now the customer says all of the arc faults breakers are tripping. At least the ones with motor loads. The dishwasher, disposal, Hoodfan, microwave and refrigerator all trip them. What is also weird is the homeowner says if he plugs the disposal into a surge protector it won't trip. Any ideas? Could it be from a loose connection on the utilities end?

It is entirely possible as AFCI's do not discriminate between upstream and downstream issues.
 

GoldDigger

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Placerville, CA, USA
Occupation
Retired PV System Designer
But if turning on those particular appliances causes the trip it is much less likely to be a problem at the transformer.
Wait a minute, if there is noise on the line that matches a series fault signature any breaker would trip as soon as its load current went above 8A.

Using an 8A resistive load should allow testing that hypothesis.
 

JFletcher

Senior Member
Location
Williamsburg, VA
AFCIs are perfect, all issues are installation mistakes

Almost spit out my drink reading that! Italics were a nice touch.

Some more info would be helpful: how many circuits are we talking about? What mfg of panel, and age? Does a hairdryer or vacuum plugged into a bedroom receptacle trip an AFCI?

Golddigger, could you post a link/elaborate on the 8A resistive load test?

re: noise on the line, swat (super wild-a**ed thought), is it possible the ground to the coax is backfeeding noise from an amp into the panel? I dunno if this is even possible, just brainstorming stuff.

Finding out what has changed from install until now seems prudent.
 

GoldDigger

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Placerville, CA, USA
Occupation
Retired PV System Designer
The idea of the resistive load test is to get the total current above the 8A threshold for enabling the series arc signature trip and doing it in a way you can be reasonably sure is not generating any arc signature of its own.
Light bulbs or simple heaters without a thermostat or fan would do that job.
 
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