Entire panel of breakers tripping off.

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scolaz

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I have a strange problem and have never seen anything like this in 22 year of being in the trade. We have a town home in a 4 plex that we wired this year that has periodic tripping off of most or every breaker in the panel. They live in the house for about 6 weeks with no problems, they say that they have not bought anything new or installed anything new. The problem started with AF breakers tripping off, and progressed to every breaker tripping off at once, even a 2 pole 50 in the panel with no branch circuit wires connected. I have meggered the feeder cable and it checks out as good. Meggered 2 home run wires to the upstairs that were having constant AF breakers tripping. One circuit had a bad wire and that circuit was refed from another circuit. This has seemed to stop the AF for that circuit from tripping. We have also tested every AF circuit with the Siemans Intelli-Arc Diagnostic Tool IDT 5000 and we dont get any definitive results with it. The home owner has unplugged every single thing in the house for periods of time and it still does it (with exception of large appliances). When there is no one home or if only one person is home it holds just just fine. There are 3 kids living in the home with 2 parents. One Parent was home for 5 days with not tripping. The entire family was gone for 10 days and not one breaker tripped while they were gone. This leads me to believe that it is related load or something specific that is being used. The home owner has been more than helpful trying to nail it down to one thing or sequence of events with nothing as of yet. Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated. :?
 
is the issue isolated to just this one panel, nobody else on the block connected to same utility transformer and phase having similar issue?

is it possible one AF tripped and somebody went out and mucked with too many breakers??

do any circuits use shared neutral?
 
Hummm .. How close to Area 51 is this?

Seriously:
It only happens when the kids are around? How old are the kids? I ask cause from the time I was 11 until I left at 17, there were a lot of strange electrical things happening around our house.

Get a decent power monitor and leave it connected. Should be able to narrow down what is causing it. You will want one that measures both legs, current and voltage, time resolution to at least milisecond transients.

ice
 
Yes this is the only unit in this building that is having the issue, but we did 1 other building next door and we have not be contacted. It has happened with me standing in front of the panel. The kids are always supervised and seem to be good kids. We have used them and there mother to try to recreate the tripping but cant seem to do it. We dont have a power monitor but maybe we can find a company that can do it for us. I dont believe there are any circuits with shared neutrals, but we will have to check. I just dont understand how every breaker could trip at once, and especially ones with no wire connected.
 
iceworm said:
Hummm .. How close to Area 51 is this?

Seriously:
It only happens when the kids are around? How old are the kids? I ask cause from the time I was 11 until I left at 17, there were a lot of strange electrical things happening around our house. ...

ice
Click to expand...

Heh... Bingo.

Homework / chore avoidance strategy #7 in JRaef's "Big book of how to get out of just about anything I don't want to do as a kid" was to have the mysterious "failures" of systems or devices that were necessary. Random breaker tripping was an easy one, I kept the local electrician busy. I once went so far as to put a frog in the gas tank of the lawn mower, then "discovering" it when the mower died, right at the time I wanted to go to a picnic with friends. They blamed it on my 4 year old sister, who would admit to anything if it got her some attention (and I knew that). I hope she never reads this, to this day she still thinks she really did it because she has heard that story all of her life and I guess can't remember that she actually didn't.
 
scolaz said:
Yes this is the only unit in this building that is having the issue, but we did 1 other building next door and we have not be contacted. It has happened with me standing in front of the panel. The kids are always supervised and seem to be good kids. We have used them and there mother to try to recreate the tripping but cant seem to do it. We dont have a power monitor but maybe we can find a company that can do it for us. I dont believe there are any circuits with shared neutrals, but we will have to check. I just dont understand how every breaker could trip at once, and especially ones with no wire connected.
Click to expand...

is this one unit metered? if so the utility company should be able to provide a monitoring meter given the circumstances. very odd though that the other unit is not having an issue. is there any chance the neutral bar in panel is lifting?

a breaker that trips with no wires just doesnt make any sense, unless it was a AF or GF type, in this case these breakers could trip if there was an imbalance in power which caused some mA to traverse the breaker and AF/GF saw it as a fault.

does the other unit have same exact breakers ?? we need make/model, etc.
 
scolaz said:
. ... I just dont understand how every breaker could trip at once, and especially ones with no wire connected.
Click to expand...
Me neither - it's a puzzle. This is residential stuff. It isn't likely the CB have anything like electronic trips - is it?

scolaz said:
. We dont have a power monitor but maybe we can find a company that can do it for us. ...
Click to expand...
Intermittents are norotiously difficult to track. Monitoring is the only way. Hopefully you can get someone that will give you the software so you can see the files - you really don't know what you are looking for.

ice
 
Another thought:
Ambient temperature? Is the panel warm to touch? Not all the time? How about when the trips occur?

ice
 
How do kids 'trip' a breaker? I can see them turning them OFF..... but I doubt they would be able to TRIP breakers for an extended time period without being found out.

And a good TS'er should know the difference between tripped and off.
 
480sparky said:
How do kids 'trip' a breaker? ...
Click to expand...
I think you are underestimating the resourcefulness of pre/teenagers. I recall an article some time back about the ghetto kid that build a particle accelarator in the family garage. As I recall the cops were certain they had a budding terrorist until the local high school science teacher said, "No, the kid is that bright."

480sparky said:
... And a good TS'er should know the difference between tripped and off.
Click to expand...

I would disagree. My thinking is a poor to medeocre "TS'er" should know the difference.

ice
 
scolaz said:
The problem started with AF breakers tripping off, and progressed to every breaker tripping off at once, even a 2 pole 50 in the panel with no branch circuit wires connected.
Click to expand...
iceworm said:
Another thought:Ambient temperature? Is the panel warm to touch? Not all the time? How about when the trips occur?ice
Click to expand...
I find the idea of a 50A breaker tripping with no load and nothing connected tripping to be very strange. I think I would pull everything in the panel and check all connection and inspect for arcing and/or moisture. Where is the panel located? Near heating ducts or any other heat source? Try to look at the job as if you have never seen it before. I'm really surprised at problem that can be there for years and no one ever notices because it's simple and always been that way. I once looked at a job where an engineer and his electrician had been working on this equipment for two days and not finding the problem. I saw what was wrong before doing any test. I'm not any smarter than those guys but I was looking for anything out of place and they had been there to long and just didn't see it ( they were looking for something complicated and not something simple).
 
scolaz said:
Yes this is the only unit in this building that is having the issue, but we did 1 other building next door and we have not be contacted. It has happened with me standing in front of the panel. The kids are always supervised and seem to be good kids. We have used them and there mother to try to recreate the tripping but cant seem to do it. We dont have a power monitor but maybe we can find a company that can do it for us. I dont believe there are any circuits with shared neutrals, but we will have to check. I just dont understand how every breaker could trip at once, and especially ones with no wire connected.
Click to expand...


Are they in the tripped position or the off.
Only a AFCI or a GFCI can trip with no load wires connected.
A two way radio can trip these.
 
iceworm said:
Hummm .. How close to Area 51 is this?

Seriously:
It only happens when the kids are around? How old are the kids? I ask cause from the time I was 11 until I left at 17, there were a lot of strange electrical things happening around our house.

Get a decent power monitor and leave it connected. Should be able to narrow down what is causing it. You will want one that measures both legs, current and voltage, time resolution to at least milisecond transients.

ice
Click to expand...

I have a customer who has a DIY installed lock on their load center. When I asked about it, they said they had a teenage daughter with mental problems who used to throw the breakers. The lock stopped the problem as she did not decide to remove the cover. When I asked, the daughter no longer lived at home and the cover was unlocked. I was supposed to find them a replacement cover without the butcher job lock, but haven't done that yet. This is my bet.

Mark
 
I like the idea of pulling all the breakers. What brand panel? Maybe it is somehow defective, loose bus shorts somehow once in a while. Did you say or know do all the breakers trip at the same time?
 
This is a new Siemans panel located in the garage. Yes each unit in the 4 plex is separately metered. It has happened with me (master with 22 years ) and a journeyman that works for us there. All kids were in our eye sight. Everything in the panel has been tightened as well as the main breaker. The breakers or wires dont seem to be hot. The heat problem had crossed my mind but for them all to trip at once due to heat seams a bit strange. These Siemans breakers do not center trip, they trip to the off position. The AF breakers have been replaced with the newest release of AF breakers from Siemans. The AF breakers sometime shows on light for af trip and sometime 2 lights for gf trip. I have had the Siemans rep on site and he is a confused as I am. I have considered installing an entire new interior in the panel with new breakers. But I hate to keep throwing darts at this. We have over 30 man hours into this already with no ware to bill for it.
 
Breakers have been known to 'trip' when subjected to impact, mechanical shock, loading. Is someone bouncing a basket ball against the garage?

Sounds like this may be a manufacturing issue, except that several different breaker ampacities are involved.
 
I'll be very interested to hear the results, because my gut reaction is "That's impossible."

A thermal-magnetic breaker is a pretty dumb animal. It will false-trip from heat or impact, and I'm not aware of anything else that can do it.

For all of them to be tripping simultaneously, it's not heat. And if it were impact, I'd expect them to be replacing all the windows in the house.

Unless you have been standing in front of this panel when it happened, I agree with Mark, the next step is to put a padlock on the panel and see if this keeps occurring, because I would put a lot of money on the cause being one of the kids.
 
iceworm said:
I think you are underestimating the resourcefulness of pre/teenagers. I recall an article some time back about the ghetto kid that build a particle accelarator in the family garage. ........
Click to expand...

I doubt there's many kids building particle accelerators these days.
 
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