Re: Siemens Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter
I read an article by (reference deleted, I couldn't find the article again and might have invented the author!) regarding AFCI's, and he described the bedroom requirement as a starting point. I can't remember what else was said regarding it, but there was a statement along those lines.
I agree with the concept, with everything I've read about what they can potentially do to prevent fires caused by damaged wire arcing. I've come to assume lately that perhaps Siemens has allowed their own testing standards to lapse. It seems that their panels have gotten harder and harder to use with their slipshod workmanship--knockouts are practically impossible to remove cleanly anymore. I have had several cases where 150 amp Metermains have the concentric pattern, but wasn't stamped deep enough to actually remove the knockout.
I figured the nuisance tripping from ITE AFCI's was just another symptom of that. I've had two and heard of...probably two other instances where a nuisance AFCI was swapped out, and then the replacement AFCI was nuisance tripping too. The third one held. Sometimes turning them off and on, the breaker decides at random to stay on or trip...
A classic was when a light in a bedroom was installed by a green guy. A wire came out of the wire nut(can't remember which, I think it was a black for one of the bulbs in the fixture itself). It resulted in me tearing half of the adjoining bathroom apart, trying to find the stupid problem. Interestingly, the five-bulb vanity would trip the AFCI, intermittently. I could turn the fan on and off in rapid succession, and I slowed way down to arc inside the switch for the vanity, to try and isolate that. The switch, despite audible arcing, didn't trip it. So, I take the vanity down.
In the end, I slowly put each bulb in independently, then sequentially, and whenever I reached 5 bulbs strong installed, the AFCI would trip with regularity. With any four bulbs in, I arced and sparked the connection to the fixture at the wire nut, no trip. So, I tighten all my connections, mess around for another minute thinking, and walk out to have a cigarette and mull it over. As I walked out of the bedroom, I noticed that the switch for the main bedroom light was on, although the light was off, breaker on. Hmm. Flip the switch off as I walked out and :trip!:
AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!
There's nothing like an intermittent problem that lies about what ROOM it's in, like an Arc Fault breaker.
Does anyone have a large nuisance rate with Homeline?
[ January 25, 2005, 08:10 AM: Message edited by: georgestolz ]