AFCI question

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jsharvey said:
The one thing that still confuses me is, why did the grounded socket only cause the breaker to trip when i turned on the fan/light?? I would have thought it would have tripped instantly since they work in the same basic fashion as an GFCI.
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This is a great question, J. S.

I wish the AFCI manufacturers would step up to the plate and help us. They appear to be very reluctant to describe what the hardware in their AFCIs is actually doing, for whatever motivation. We have good resource for actual GFCI devices, from individual manufacturers, but when it comes to AFCIs, nada. We, in the field, have been struggling with this from the beginning of AFCIs.

If Cutler Hammer, GE, Square D and Siemens are going to champion the installation of the AFCI, then they must tell us how they actually work so we can service the circuits they "protect".
 
iwire said:
If I recall correctly BPHgravity had posted some info from Siemens saying that they do not recommend suppling small motors with their AFCI breakers.
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Universal motors probably look alot like arc faults to the AFCI (or enough so that the vendors want to discourage the chances of nuisance trips).

Most bath fans, I would think, would be small shaded-pole induction motors, which don't have brushes and shouldn't be a problem.
 
Another AFCI question

How many times will the homeowner plug in their vacuum and trip the AFCI before they head out to Home Depot and buy a regular breaker to swap out the AFCI ?

The code panel needs to realize that forcing devices into homes that isn't compatible with the homeowners "stuff" isn't going to work. . The result isn't a safer house, it's less respect for the code among the public.

David
 
I had a new circuit on a remodel that would trip the AFCI only when a load was applied to the circuit.
I had roughed in the job about a month prior and came back after the drywall to finish up.

I lifted the neutral for the circuit (in the panel) and my meter showed continuity between it and ground...Uh Oh.

I questioned the homeowner about the drywall, did they leave any screws laying around (length?), anybody drive any nails in the wall, etc...No.
The drywaller had used 1 1/4" screws, so no problem there.

I started opening up boxes, lifting the neutral and checking for continuity to ground in order to isolate the problem. The check led me to a closet in which the customer had installed a modular closet organizer... "Oh...I forgot to tell you" he said.
Sure enough, he had run some 2 1/2" screws into the wall to support it and hit the NMB (between the neutral and ground). This was the wire that fed the last receptacle on the circuit (which happened to be one of two in the closet, customer request, don't ask why), so (with his OK) I disconnected the wire at the preceding box and killed (and removed) the last recpt.
Problem solved.

I make it a practice now when I'm terminating the branch circuits in a panel to connect all of the grounds first and check each neutral for continuity to ground before I install it on the terminal.
If there is continuity, you have a problem somewhere.
steve
 
Gotta give you alot of credit for finding a screw in the wire..Good Job..Last year I installed three 2pole 15amp AFCI breakers in a cuttler Hammer panel.With"ZERO" load on the circuits ,nothing on, down stream of the panel, all three breakers are warm to the touch. they are functioning normally other then this.everything on the cicuits work fine?Any suggestions?
 
acrwc10 said:
all three breakers are warm to the touch. they are functioning normally other then this.everything on the cicuits work fine?Any suggestions?
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Yea, I hear this concern every once in awhile. AFCI's will be a little warm. The reason is that they are the first microprocessor-controlled residential breakers. Each one contains a microcontroller that monitors the current waveform over time, and attempts to ascertain if the load is arcing unsafely.

That microcontroller needs a power supply; each breaker contains a small AC-to-DC converter to supply power to the chip. As all converters do, this one generates a little bit of heat.
 
BarryO said:
That microcontroller needs a power supply; each breaker contains a small AC-to-DC converter to supply power to the chip. As all converters do, this one generates a little bit of heat.
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And manufacturers recommend that you don't place them side by side in the panel. . So what's going to happen when every single pole breaker in the entire panel is an AFCI ?

Maybe the heating contractor can reroute his hot air supply duct to blow onto the panel to heat the house without the furnace burners ever coming on

David
 
al hildenbrand said:
I wish the AFCI manufacturers would step up to the plate and help us. They appear to be very reluctant to describe what the hardware in their AFCIs is actually doing, for whatever motivation. We have good resource for actual GFCI devices, from individual manufacturers, but when it comes to AFCIs, nada. We, in the field, have been struggling with this from the beginning of AFCIs.
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See if you can find a list of patent numbers on the AFCI and I'll look them up.
 
I started opening up boxes, lifting the neutral and checking for continuity to ground in order to isolate the problem. The check led me to a closet in which the customer had installed a modular closet organizer... "Oh...I forgot to tell you" he said.
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I guess the answer to the basic problem here is we should be putting nail plates over every place we drill no matter how far it is from the face of the wood stud. I have been making it my practice to nail plate every drilled hole in kitchens and baths for several years now, because I have seen what types of screws the cabinet hangers show up with. Never mind that the other trades seem to have left education and common sense out of the daily routine and they get to hack up the cables with nobody but the electrician caring about it. Maybe, just maybe Chicago is right after all. Maybe every house needs to be wired in emt, and have afci breakers for all circuits, not in order to protect against rodents or keep the workforce employed, but rather since it is asking too much of the other trades to actually care even a tiny little bit about damage to the installed wiring. Why should drywallers and cabinet installers care about it since the general contractor don't give a rip about it either?
 
macmikeman said:
I guess the answer to the basic problem here is we should be putting nail plates over every place we drill no matter how far it is from the face of the wood stud. I have been making it my practice to nail plate every drilled hole in kitchens and baths for several years now, because I have seen what types of screws the cabinet hangers show up with. Never mind that the other trades seem to have left education and common sense out of the daily routine and they get to hack up the cables with nobody but the electrician caring about it. Maybe, just maybe Chicago is right after all. Maybe every house needs to be wired in emt, and have afci breakers for all circuits, not in order to protect against rodents or keep the workforce employed, but rather since it is asking too much of the other trades to actually care even a tiny little bit about damage to the installed wiring. Why should drywallers and cabinet installers care about it since the general contractor don't give a rip about it either?
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I don't nail plate a kitchen because I don't drill my wires where the cabinet guy will screw the cabinet thru....just my 2 cents... I have never had a wire hit by a screw, but I think about other trades when i drill out a house as well... nobody thinks about me but me... besides that I have been on jobs where the drywall installer has removed the nail plates because they leave bumps behind the sheetrock... so its easier for me to work around them...
 
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macmikeman said:
I guess the answer to the basic problem here is we should be putting nail plates over every place we drill no matter how far it is from the face of the wood stud. I have been making it my practice to nail plate every drilled hole in kitchens and baths for several years now, because I have seen what types of screws the cabinet hangers show up with. Never mind that the other trades seem to have left education and common sense out of the daily routine and they get to hack up the cables with nobody but the electrician caring about it. Maybe, just maybe Chicago is right after all. Maybe every house needs to be wired in emt, and have afci breakers for all circuits, not in order to protect against rodents or keep the workforce employed, but rather since it is asking too much of the other trades to actually care even a tiny little bit about damage to the installed wiring. Why should drywallers and cabinet installers care about it since the general contractor don't give a rip about it either?
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They will care if they get a backcharge for 500 or even more.They might even need to remove cabinet first.Add on plumbers bill too.We had some very unhappy wood butchers a couple years ago.They put up chair rail with staple gun and hit 2 pieces of mc on one wall and another in differant room.The room was wallpapered and painted.You cant patch wallpaper.Not sure what total bill was but it was high between our charge,drywall man,painter,wallpaper.And then they also got to reinstall chair rail.Can you say OUCH!!!!!!!!!!
 
Signal trips afci

Signal trips afci

I would think any motor could be problematic for an AFCI. An AFCI works by monitoring the electron flow. Any time the flow is dispruptive for a certain amout of time it activates. It's a lot more complicated than that but a motor can cause all kinds of weird things to happen on a circuit, it kind of bothered me when they went from receptacles in the 2002 to outlets in the 2005!
 
What is going to happen if the "combination" type AFCI is ever put on the market? (note the combination AFCI is required starting 1/1/08, but noone has made one that works yet) The current AFCI does not look at the arc unless the current is 75 amps or greater, the combination type looks if the current is 5 amps or more. You are seeing nuisance trips with the currently available device, think about a device that is 15 times more sensitive.
Don
 
Jim W in Tampa said:
They will care if they get a backcharge for 500 or even more.They might even need to remove cabinet first.Add on plumbers bill too.We had some very unhappy wood butchers a couple years ago.They put up chair rail with staple gun and hit 2 pieces of mc on one wall and another in differant room.The room was wallpapered and painted.You cant patch wallpaper.Not sure what total bill was but it was high between our charge,drywall man,painter,wallpaper.And then they also got to reinstall chair rail.Can you say OUCH!!!!!!!!!!
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how does a staple gun hit a wire thats 1.25 deep plus the material of the chair rail? plus you used MC...? I'm confused? I've never drilled a set of holes at 32-36" off the rough floor... like I said, never had I wire hit, doubt I ever will...
 
I also nail plate all holes where a cabinet is to be installed.I`ve seen to many 3 in screws used that have penetrated the wiring behind them.I`ve also seen where i did an outdoor tiki bar with 5/4 t&g with 3 in insulated plywood above, where we wired in emt behind the t&g and the sheathing installers hit the emt 3 times.Tell me they didn`t know they had hit metal lol.Like Jim said if they hit it they pay and my backcharges are really quite expensive.

I had a painting contractor go off the deep end awhile ago.His guys just painted eveything in sight,including the panel interiors.When he got a backcharge for 17 panels @ $295 each he freaked.The builder just took the money out of his check.Why should I pay was his question to me.Real simple I didn`t contaminate the panels your guys did.Now they mask and paper everything :)
 
295$ a panel? He should be happy. Sounds like you cut him a break. My boss just saw a painter use one of our emergency lights (wall mount) as a step. He snapped a picture of it with his camera phone. I got to see if I can get it and post it.
 
allenwayne said:
I also nail plate all holes where a cabinet is to be installed.I`ve seen to many 3 in screws used that have penetrated the wiring behind them.I`ve also seen where i did an outdoor tiki bar with 5/4 t&g with 3 in insulated plywood above, where we wired in emt behind the t&g and the sheathing installers hit the emt 3 times.Tell me they didn`t know they had hit metal lol.Like Jim said if they hit it they pay and my backcharges are really quite expensive.

I had a painting contractor go off the deep end awhile ago.His guys just painted eveything in sight,including the panel interiors.When he got a backcharge for 17 panels @ $295 each he freaked.The builder just took the money out of his check.Why should I pay was his question to me.Real simple I didn`t contaminate the panels your guys did.Now they mask and paper everything :)
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Code says you don't need to nail plate EMT but did you? And again, why on earth would you drill a set of holes where they screw the cabinet in?
 
stickboy1375 said:
how does a staple gun hit a wire thats 1.25 deep plus the material of the chair rail? plus you used MC...? I'm confused? I've never drilled a set of holes at 32-36" off the rough floor... like I said, never had I wire hit, doubt I ever will...
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When the installer is using 2 inch finishing nails. I had it happen too, only it was the HO himself. He shot 2 inch nails at every height imaginable and hit my Romex twice.
 
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