So, here's a weird one (at least for me). I was called to a house for a hairdryer tripping the breaker. When I opened the receptacle boxes in the bathroom, every single box had dangerously loose connections (both wire nut and wire->device connections). After fixing those, the customer and contractor wanted me to go through the whole house and check switch and receptacle boxes for more. Probably about 75% of the boxes in the house had loose/bad connections or other problems (like the back of a receptacle box cut off to make it fit in a smaller space or the N/G for the living room circuit being tapped off the furnace circuit instead of the living room). Also about half the AFCI and combo breakers in the panel had the arc and ground fault protection bypassed by running the neutral wire straight to the neutral bar and capping off the pigtail. I've got all the breakers wired back up properly, but now I can't get the arc fault breakers to trip properly. I can trip them with the test button, but if I touch the ground and neutral together, nothing happens. Normally, that's an instant trip. I've even used a jumper wire in the panel from N lug on the breaker to the ground bar to see if I could trip it that way. All the troubleshooting discussions I see are on what to do with arc faults tripping too often, but had anyone dealt with ones that won't trip at all?
AFCI breakers NOT tripping when they should
- Thread starter WildCelt
- Start date
- Location
- Tennessee NEC:2017
- Occupation
- Semi-Retired Electrician
AFCI have a form of ground fault protection in them.That's why contact between neutral and ground caused them to trip. Now, some of the mfg have taken the GFP out of them. Neutral to ground fault will not trip them now. If the test button works, that's all that matters, and is the only recognized method of testing them.
Welcome to the Forum!
Welcome to the Forum!
Do you know if GE is one of those? I put in mostly Square D, so I've never run into this. Would this be similar to how you can put a GFCI receptacle on an old 2-wire setup and the plug tester won't trip it, but the button will?
- Location
- Tennessee NEC:2017
- Occupation
- Semi-Retired Electrician
GE is one of these, and I think were the first to do so. Yes, it would be similar to ungrounded GFCI not tripping with a tester.
jaggedben
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern California
- Occupation
- Solar and Energy Storage Installer
Some do, some don't. A breaker that is not labeled GFCI should not be expected to trip on a neutral to ground fault.
jaggedben
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern California
- Occupation
- Solar and Energy Storage Installer
Those loose connections might have been a ticking time bomb but unless you saw evidence of arcing they are no reason the AFCIs should have tripped. As I noted in my previous reply, touching neutral to ground is not a test of AFCI functionality, only GFCI.
ramsy
NoFixNoPay Electric
- Location
- LA basin, CA
- Occupation
- Service Electrician 2020 NEC
Nice job. Always wondered how GC laborers & panel flippers could make xFCI work, much less pass inspection.
IMHO The test button always supersedes other indicators, especially when it fails to trip energized devices.
In your case, shorting N-G relies on GFPE functions to trip the device. Several types of AFCI wont have GFPE or GFCI.
IMHO all types of AFCI’s trip by holding bare EGC & load Neutral in same hand, without touching each other, which may not be possible from the fuse box.
Ok, so with this info to direct my search, I did find this thread explaining more. Thanks for the quick help. Now I can quit spending mental bandwidth on that and move on to fixing the other horrible workmanship in this house's electrical system.
Oh, he clearly had a problem on his hands, but he either didn't know how or didn't care to do the troubleshooting to figure out what he did wrong. I didn't even notice it the first time I took the panel cover off, because who does that?
Ticking time bomb, indeed, regardless of my issue with next-gen AFCIs. I even had a couple of switches that had the grounds disconnected from the switch and each other, taped up, and shoved back in the back of the box. When I investigated, they had solid continuity with the hots because something had pierced the wire in the wall. They just masked it up instead of fixing it.
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jaggedben
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern California
- Occupation
- Solar and Energy Storage Installer
That's really bad.
- Location
- Tennessee NEC:2017
- Occupation
- Semi-Retired Electrician
- Location
- Tennessee NEC:2017
- Occupation
- Semi-Retired Electrician
The AFCI that did have the GFP in them were never labeled as such. You must be thinking of DF (Dual Function) breakers.
wwhitney
Senior Member
- Location
- Berkeley, CA
- Occupation
- Retired
Was just a little bit odd that you started off saying "A is true" and then ended with "but now A is not always true." So I was confused until I got to the end of your post. I would have expected you to start with "A used to be true . . ."
Cheers, Wayne
- Location
- Tennessee NEC:2017
- Occupation
- Semi-Retired Electrician
Not odd at all as not as not all the mfg have taken that out. Both my statements were true. It wouldn't matter if I started with "some mfg have taken it out" then said "they have a form of GFP in them".
You have to read the paragraph as a whole.
The OP was asking why they wouldn't trip when touching neutral to ground. I stated by telling him why that would be if the AFCI had the GFP in them. Then why it would not if the AFCI didn't have the GFP.
jaggedben
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern California
- Occupation
- Solar and Energy Storage Installer
What Wayne said.
To repeat and clarify, a breaker that is labeled only as AFCI and not GFCI *may* trip on a neutral-ground fault, but should not be *expected* to.
wwhitney
Senior Member
- Location
- Berkeley, CA
- Occupation
- Retired
Sorry to belabor this, but you have a tense discrepancy in your first two sentences of post #2. It starts "AFCI have a form of ground fault protection in them. That's why contact between neutral and ground caused them to trip." Present tense in the first sentence, past tense in the second sentence. This discrepancy led to post #5.
I think you meant to use the past tense in first sentence: "AFCI had a form of ground fault protection in them." That simple change removes the implication that it is still true.
Cheers, Wayne
To be fair, some still do, as evidenced by still being able to trip out new SqD AFCIs that way. While there may be a more technically accurate syntax, I understood exactly what Bill meant.
ramsy
NoFixNoPay Electric
- Location
- LA basin, CA
- Occupation
- Service Electrician 2020 NEC
I believe all types of AFCI trip by holding bare EGC & load Neutral in same hand, without touching each other.
This N-G resistance that trips all types of AFCI is considered a resistive fault, not to be confused with GFPE bolted N-G fault.
This N-G resistance that trips all types of AFCI is considered a resistive fault, not to be confused with GFPE bolted N-G fault.
- Location
- Tennessee NEC:2017
- Occupation
- Semi-Retired Electrician
Not since the GFP was removed from SOME brands of AFCI.