BMacky
Senior Member
- Location
- Foster City, CA
I recently remodeled a home where we converted a bedroom into an office, but by definition, the closet, which now holds a printer, copier and a bunch of networking gear, still makes this space considered a bedroom. So I ran a dedicated circuit to all outlets in this space, including the smoke, which is interconnected to the one outside in the hallway. Nothing else in this space is fed by any other circuit. During the remodel phase I was sure to be certain nothing existing had been tied into this new circuit.
The day after I installed the AFCI (Murray/Siemens single-pole 20A combo) they called me to say the "office" breaker had tripped while shredding paper. I went to the home that day and did a little research. The shredder that was used was on another circuit in the house that fed an outlet in a room several feet away. I traced the circuit to a breaker that happened to be directly below the AFCI in the panel. The breaker was an old Westinghouse tandem 15A, and was pretty loose. I pulled it and inspected the tab on the bussing, thinking maybe it was causing some arcing in the panel that might be somehow backfeeding its way into the arc fault circuitry, perhaps via the neutral (but how?) since this was stabbed down on the opposite phase as far as the bussing goes. I changed the breaker to a new one with a much tighter fit. I also did a thorough check of all other terminals in the panel, since I had the panel open. All seemed fine.
I buttoned things up and asked the cutomer to monitor what was going on at the time it trips if it did trip again. A week went by, maybe 10 days.
Well, it did trip, and they were using the shredder when it happened. They emailed me a list of all loads on at the time of the trip, so I have some data to work with (or some red herrings to scratch off what hair is left on my head).
The question is if there is any possibility that this shredder had caused the problem, even on a different circuit. I posted here to get some feedback from the field, and will do some more research as well. I have found that reading other posts related to afci's is good to do, but haven't stumbled upon any new data that helps. I will be contacting the mfr as well, but will be happy to hear from any of you that have suggestions.
The day after I installed the AFCI (Murray/Siemens single-pole 20A combo) they called me to say the "office" breaker had tripped while shredding paper. I went to the home that day and did a little research. The shredder that was used was on another circuit in the house that fed an outlet in a room several feet away. I traced the circuit to a breaker that happened to be directly below the AFCI in the panel. The breaker was an old Westinghouse tandem 15A, and was pretty loose. I pulled it and inspected the tab on the bussing, thinking maybe it was causing some arcing in the panel that might be somehow backfeeding its way into the arc fault circuitry, perhaps via the neutral (but how?) since this was stabbed down on the opposite phase as far as the bussing goes. I changed the breaker to a new one with a much tighter fit. I also did a thorough check of all other terminals in the panel, since I had the panel open. All seemed fine.
I buttoned things up and asked the cutomer to monitor what was going on at the time it trips if it did trip again. A week went by, maybe 10 days.
Well, it did trip, and they were using the shredder when it happened. They emailed me a list of all loads on at the time of the trip, so I have some data to work with (or some red herrings to scratch off what hair is left on my head).
The question is if there is any possibility that this shredder had caused the problem, even on a different circuit. I posted here to get some feedback from the field, and will do some more research as well. I have found that reading other posts related to afci's is good to do, but haven't stumbled upon any new data that helps. I will be contacting the mfr as well, but will be happy to hear from any of you that have suggestions.