GFCI vs. AFCI

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jutt18

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A friend of mine recently called wanting an answer to a matter involving ground fault vs arc fault. He was wiring a house and used arc fault breakers for his bedroom circuits. He also connected an outdoor recepticle at either bedroom to the arc fault circuits. When the inspector came to the house he stuck his GFCI tester into the outdoor recepticles and they didn't trip. After finding that they were on AFCI's, he failed the inspection and made him change the outdoor recepticles to GFCI's. He called me wanting to know why the tester would not trip the arc fault breaker. I answered him to the best of my knowledge in that a ground fault looks for an imbalanced load and an arc fault detects an arc or the possibility of an arc. I still have some confusion about the arc fault myself tho, so if anyone has anything to share about AFCI or even GFCI I would be more than grateful!!
 
Re: GFCI vs. AFCI

your friend should have hired an electrician.

afci and gfci do different things. they are not interchangable.
 
Re: GFCI vs. AFCI

A ground fault circuit interrupter will de-energize a circuit when current to ground exceeds a value 4 to 6 ma class a ..
A arc fault de-energizesthe circuit when a arc is detected.ART210.12 explains this well :roll:
 
Re: GFCI vs. AFCI

There is nothing that says that an afci circuit can1t have a gfci recep line sided to provide gfci protection.So line side a gfci and be done with it. ;)
 
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