Arc Faults....

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fisherelectric

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Northern Va
I have a client who had issues with two out of three arc fault breakers in his house suddenly tripping and not resetting over night....last night. These breakers had been working fine for a year. I was wondering if a possible PoCo issue could cause that....?
 
fisherelectric said:
I have a client who had issues with two out of three arc fault breakers in his house suddenly tripping and not resetting over night....last night. These breakers had been working fine for a year. I was wondering if a possible PoCo issue could cause that....?
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Or perhaps they actually detected a problem?

I would at least lift the circuit(s) from the panel end and check for continuity from ground to neutral etc.
 
You will need to troubleshoot as Iwire says.

It wouldn't surprise me if you had bad arc fault breakers. What causes them to go bad I have no idea. It could be a power surge. I would swap the one good arc fault over to one of the other circuits and see if it holds.
 
Don't forget the susceptibility of some AFCI breakers to radio frequency interference. Maybe a nearby ham radio operator was working a contest during the night. :)
 
yeah...so I found out some more info on this problem. The homeowner said the first breaker tripped about 10:00PM. He reset it and it held about 1/2 an hour, then tripped again. That happened a couple of times...until it wouldn't reset. Then the second breaker tripped with similar results. When he called this AM at 6:30 both wouldn't reset.

I'm out of town, so I tried the over-the-phone-service-call- cause you can't get there routine.
Had him turn off and unplug everything on both circuits, and reset the breakers. They held for an hour, then had him turn on his bedroom ceiling fan, which then tripped in 1/2 an hour. Had him turn off his fan and turn on other things gradually one at a time. As of this afternoon....he had everything back on, including his fan, and everything was holding for the last three hours (luckily the guy works at home). I told him to leave his fan off and run everything business as usual over night, then try his fan in the AM and see what happens. Told him I'd replace both breakers when I'm back in town regardless.

So my question this AM was could a PoCo surge do this? Sure...I guess.
Could one AFCI interfere with a second and make it trip? I don't know. He said the first was off when the second tripped.
Asked him if he had run cords from one bedroom to the next to get things on....he said he had run cords....but not plugged into the second circuit that tripped.
My experience has been that homeowners get confused about what has actually happened....and what they have actually done to remedy things.
Strange that after a year two AFCIs would trip on the same night at different times. Maybe planned obsolescence? :cool:
Seems like a surge from the street would have done permanent damage...?
Anyway...thanks for the replies.
 
I've had two customers recently with AFCI nuisance tripping and discovered something by chance. Both customers had track lights on their problem circuits. I discovered each had a burned out halogen/ incandescent lamp installed. I replaced the burned out lamp and the problem was resolved. So I'd check for a burned out lamp in the fan.

Also had a customer with a European vacumn with two speeds that would only trip the AFCI when started on low speed. So she just starts it in high speed. So maybe check the fan speeds.
 
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