AFCI's have they proven themselves?

brother said:
Thanks for the input. I have yet to see the data that shows definitively that AFCI s have stopped or reduce fires. That's what the debate has been about recently in other jurisdictions. Inflation and rising housing prices helped bring it to the forefront again.

The cost of an afci 20 amp single pole vs just a basic single pole is almost 10 times more. Saw it at home depot $65 afci vs $7.85 cents normal breaker.

One guy told me hes adding another circuit to his house and he was not paying extra for an afci. All the rest of breakers are old normal breakers. Lol

It would be interesting to see if the money crisis and inflation causes a change. We also have to remember that some rooms , bathrooms, etc do not have afci required and it has been just fine.
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Won't happen until some group with deep enough pockets puts an effort into providing convincing information to the code making panels. The manufacturers have deep enough pockets and motivation to keep producing one sided studies to present to them on why we need them. Many the same manufacturers also make GFCI's, which do have a more proven usefulness, but most the GFCI rule changes since maybe 2005 NEC have been more "because we can" instead of a solution to a real world problem.
 
electrofelon said:
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I will say that I believe most afci trips are from sloppy wiring....
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In my experience it's still mostly from motor appliances. But this just further contributes to the crying wolf problem.

Speaking as one who removed drywall one time, because there was clear evidence I'd hit something in the wall.
 
jaggedben said:
In my experience it's still mostly from motor appliances. But this just further contributes to the crying wolf problem.

Speaking as one who removed drywall one time, because there was clear evidence I'd hit something in the wall.
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Usually motor appliances that have solid state control method of actual motor current, like variable speed controls. simpler controls for shaded pole and PSC motors aren't as bad about it. These controls don't play well with GFCI's either. I've seen some that trip AFCI/GFCI that aren't even on the same circuit.
 
Actually I don't know why I said motor appliances specifically. I've also seen it with televisions.

Fundamental problem is that AFCIs had too many false positives. Electrofelon is right that unless there was a smoking gun event that caused the trip, no one is going to open sheet rock, or even j-boxes, when they can blame the AFCI.
 
What's disturbing is that people just replace with a regular breaker without doing any due diligence at all. If the reputation of AFCIs weren't so bad...
 
ramsy said:
Do you install AFCI's were required, or not?
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I do commercial work so I don't have to deal with them at this time. In the past I have installed them where required by code. I have personally seen them nuisance trip where there was nothing wrong with the wiring and no chance of an arc. Most recently it was a 2019 model Samsung refrigerator that tripped a Siemens dual function breaker at my in-law's house. The house was built before AFCI protection was required for kitchen circuits so the fix was easy, get rid of the dual function breaker and install a straight GFCI breaker. Since then everything works fine.
 
jaggedben said:
What's disturbing is that people just replace with a regular breaker without doing any due diligence at all. If the reputation of AFCIs weren't so bad...
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What's disturbing is AFCIs can do nothing to stop house fires yet the public is forced to pay for them.

It's not the reputation of AFCIs that matters. They don't work. They can't stop a glowing arc, and that is where you are going to get a house fire. Besides, with each new generation of this garbage they are tuning the sensing technology so that televisions and vacuum cleaners don't trip them, how do we know that's not tuning out some level of legitimate arcing that should be sensed.

Their introduction and expansion in the NEC is largely what has turned me into such a cynic about the entire code making process and the members of the CMPs.

What's even worse is we could have better and safer electrical installs everywhere with less annoyance, willing compliance, and due diligence in troubleshooting because nuisance tripping would not be an issue, if the NEC would expand GFPE level protection.
 
I just had an electrician call me about them. He was trying to get final on a house that is off grid and powered by an inverter from a well known, long time large manufacturer. None of the AFCIs would trip when he pushed the button. Inspector was refusing to sign off. House has been occupied and operating on this system for years with no trouble. New house.

I have had false tripping from generator power. Large, well established home standby generators, even loaded a similar one in the back of the truck and retested it that way. Breaker flashes a code that does not exist in the manual, tech support no help.

So, not only are they unnecessary for their intended purpose, they also behave strangely or not at all, if you feed them power that does not 100% exactly equal utility sine wave, but is 100% suitable for all other utilization purposes.

Electronic junk that just barely works even to hold itself together.
 
ActionDave said:
What's disturbing is AFCIs can do nothing to stop house fires yet the public is forced to pay for them.

It's not the reputation of AFCIs that matters. They don't work. ...
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No, they work sometimes. I've seen them trip on actual arcs. So it's disturbing that since they also trip on all sorts of non-problems, people don't look for arcs when they trip. Present company excepted.
 
jaggedben said:
No, they work sometimes. I've seen them trip on actual arcs. ....
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If that's true then you are the only one who has. What were the circumstances?

I've hooked them up on the test bench and subjected them to worn out universal motors with brushes so bad a blue arc would almost encircle the commutator. I've pulled arcs with carbon rods and still wasn't able to get them to trip. Put them in a circuit where the coil of a relay and the NC contacts were in series so it would spark as the contacts chattered away. No trip on any of my tests.

The only time I've been able to make them trip is with loads that contain electronics. LED lights, television sets, power tools with soft starts, my brother-in-law's refrigerator....
 
If you saw some of the kitchens or cars of the executives at Siemens, Eaton, Square D, etc., then you would agree, it was worth it. In a brilliant move, they put themselves on the code making panel for 210.12 and created a miracle - the $45 20 amp breaker.
 
ActionDave said:
If that's true then you are the only one who has. What were the circumstances?

I've hooked them up on the test bench and subjected them to worn out universal motors with brushes so bad a blue arc would almost encircle the commutator. I've pulled arcs with carbon rods and still wasn't able to get them to trip. Put them in a circuit where the coil of a relay and the NC contacts were in series so it would spark as the contacts chattered away. No trip on any of my tests.

The only time I've been able to make them trip is with loads that contain electronics. LED lights, television sets, power tools with soft starts, my brother-in-law's refrigerator....
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Okay, I've actually seen exactly one receptacle with an arcing terminal connection that was getting caught. In a couple other cases an inadequately torqued conductor on the breaker terminal itself tripped the arc fault when I jiggled wires in the panel, then it stopped when I torqued them properly, although in those cases admittedly no visible arcing occured.
 
jaggedben said:
Okay, I've actually seen exactly one receptacle with an arcing terminal connection that was getting caught. In a couple other cases an inadequately torqued conductor on the breaker terminal itself tripped the arc fault when I jiggled wires in the panel, then it stopped when I torqued them properly, although in those cases admittedly no visible arcing occured.
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I have never seen an AFCI " catch" that. There are multiple YouTube videos of people making a series arc, and I have tried it too and never gotten one to trip.
 
I agree Arc Faults are right up there with tamper proof receptacles. A grown up has a hard time plugging something in :) . All about the money
 
jaggedben said:
Okay, I've actually seen exactly one receptacle with an arcing terminal connection that was getting caught. In a couple other cases an inadequately torqued conductor on the breaker terminal itself tripped the arc fault when I jiggled wires in the panel, then it stopped when I torqued them properly, although in those cases admittedly no visible arcing occured.
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I've seen exactly one receptacle with a overheating terminal, don't know for certain but kind of doubt it developed any arcing but it was tripping an AFCI breaker. First though was an AFCI that actually detected an arcing fault. Further testing indicated it had developed a ground fault though, so I am suspect the GFP function of the breaker was what actually was tripping it. Think it was old enough it didn't have diagnostic function yet to confirm.
 
Even if manufacturers aren't on the CMP, they have deep enough pockets to present demonstrations and publish information to persuade any CMP members that there is a need for their products. How likely is a group of people like some of us that hang around here going to present demonstrations and publish information to try to persuade the CMP's the other way? Whatever information is presented would need to be fairly convincing as the other side of this also has the safety card to pull that is usually going to be at least a tiebreaker on decisions, let alone we likely wouldn't throw as much money at it as the manufacturers do in creating such presentations. Some the videos you find of someone attempting to prove they don't work are enough to make you think but right or wrong the CMP member sees you doing this in your garage and they aren't as impressed as the manufacturer doing their tests in their labs with a lot more high tech equipment. So it is my opinion these manufacturers to some extent of pay their way to get what they want in the code, you are welcome to challenge what is there but you going to need something pretty convincing to win and it likely will cost you a lot to win as well.
 
I've thought for a while that instead of trying to get rid of AFCI requirements, alternative safety improvements should be allowed to substitute.

Take the strongest propaganda supporting the use of AFCIs, and use that to do a cost/benefit analysis. Then let the sprinkler companies use the known insurance statistics for the fire protection value of sprinklers. See which gives better cost/benefit.

If sprinklers provide better safety performance (fewer deaths per installation) then IMHO having sprinklers should generate an exception to the AFCI requirements. If having sprinklers are actually better on cost/benefit, then IMHO code should be promoting sprinklers more than AFCIs.

My hunch is that sprinklers are a better safety value than AFCIs, but I don't actually know that.

-Jon
 
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