Would you, or not??

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norcal

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If you were building your own home in a location that did not have inspections, would you use AFCI's? A little background, I live in what is probably the hottest real estate market in the US, nothing like 14,000 homes being incinerated to change things overnight and want to get the hell out of California, downside not ready to sell yet, but thought it would be interesting to hear the opinion of others. The market is not going to be as crazy as it is currently, where people are paying as much as $50K over asking price in order to get a property, when it does correct there is going to be a lot of folks holding property worth less then what they paid for it. One location am considering has no inspections other then septic & I have held the opinion that the work that you do should be the same whether inspected or not, but really don't care for AFCI's.
 
If you were building your own home in a location that did not have inspections, would you use AFCI's? A little background, I live in what is probably the hottest real estate market in the US, nothing like 14,000 homes being incinerated to change things overnight and want to get the hell out of California, downside not ready to sell yet, but thought it would be interesting to hear the opinion of others. The market is not going to be as crazy as it is currently, where people are paying as much as $50K over asking price in order to get a property, when it does correct there is going to be a lot of folks holding property worth less then what they paid for it. One location am considering has no inspections other then septic & I have held the opinion that the work that you do should be the same whether inspected or not, but really don't care for AFCI's.

I expect the mods to close this, before they do,

No, would not put afci in own house, no way.
 
If you were building your own home in a location that did not have inspections, would you use AFCI's? A little background, I live in what is probably the hottest real estate market in the US, nothing like 14,000 homes being incinerated to change things overnight and want to get the hell out of California, downside not ready to sell yet, but thought it would be interesting to hear the opinion of others. The market is not going to be as crazy as it is currently, where people are paying as much as $50K over asking price in order to get a property, when it does correct there is going to be a lot of folks holding property worth less then what they paid for it. One location am considering has no inspections other then septic & I have held the opinion that the work that you do should be the same whether inspected or not, but really don't care for AFCI's.

I am not a fan of AFCI protection as it functions right now I don't know if it actually does help prevent fires.
That being said even if your/ my work is not going to be inspected I would still wire the house to the most recent codes.
If there were ever an incident I would not want to give the insurance company any excuse not to pay up.
 
The fact that there are many jurisdictions (so I hear, I couldn't name one offhand) that exempt AFCIs from an otherwise large adoption of the NEC greatly eases my conscience, because I wouldn't install them anyway. I've replaced too many of them in my career, and am friends with a guy who does testing for UL.
 
Absolutely not. I have yet to see independent testing results that actually show a quantifiable harm reduction through the use of AFCI's. I say independent because the manufacturer-supplied literature is biased, at best. They are after all, trying to sell a product.

My metric is, "would I feel OK not using them at my house, or my parents' house?" I sleep just fine at night with regular circuit breakers installed at my house, and my parents' house. In fact, my father asked me to install several at his house years ago, and we ended up removing them soon after because they'd randomly and inexplicably trip even with no load conductor attached.

I see GFCI protection as a much more demonstrably useful life safety feature. I'm actually surprised that we haven't seen more code-mandated adoption of GFCI.

As to those who say "It's in the code, so gotta do it no questions asked or answered," I think that's a lazy way out. They don't/can't protect against glowing connections (the largest source of electrical fires) and they trip when they don't need to. They've been foisted upon us by manufacturers, and all they do is cost our customers money.

My 0.02$


SceneryDriver
 
AFCI's are problematic in older homes when doing remodeling. They should be perfectly fine in a brand new home. I don't think UL and NEC people are idiots so AFCI's must perform some useful function even if few here believe that. I would install them in my own new home because even a small increase in safety is worth the price.
 
You would still want to build to code even if no inspections, that is if you expect to have homeowner's insurance and invite people over.

You would want to know which code is adopted by law as required for your jurisdiction, and if it includes AFCI's. If there's only voluntary compliance, I would build it to the '05 code and no AFCI. You would want to be in the position on being able to say it's built to code for the insurance coverage and avoidance of liability for negligence.
 
You would still want to build to code even if no inspections, that is if you expect to have homeowner's insurance and invite people over.

You would want to know which code is adopted by law as required for your jurisdiction, and if it includes AFCI's. If there's only voluntary compliance, I would build it to the '05 code and no AFCI. You would want to be in the position on being able to say it's built to code for the insurance coverage and avoidance of liability for negligence.

The area I am thinking about does funky things with wiring, one house built with steel studs they ran triplex through the studs, another house the 4/0 AL SE conductors were run w/o conduit & the insulation colors are 2 white & one black, do have a photo of that one but it did not show much because of the poor lighting in the basement. I'll leave the location blank for now. In order for me to sleep well, any construction work has to be done right, not like the examples above.
 
If you were building your own home in a location that did not have inspections, would you use AFCI's? I have held the opinion that the work that you do should be the same whether inspected or not, but really don't care for AFCI's.

Regular breakers don't cost that much so if at a latter date there is some reason to install AFCIs (required by insurance or something) then you haven't lost much by using regular breakers to start with.
 
The area I am thinking about does funky things with wiring, one house built with steel studs they ran triplex through the studs, another house the 4/0 AL SE conductors were run w/o conduit & the insulation colors are 2 white & one black, do have a photo of that one but it did not show much because of the poor lighting in the basement. I'll leave the location blank for now. In order for me to sleep well, any construction work has to be done right, not like the examples above.

If you are a professional and know residential why would you all of a sudden do work like that? Matter of fact I always over design my own work. If I was going to wire my own new home I would probably use MC rather than NM. As to whether I would install AFCIs- hell no. But as [MENTION=78681]growler[/MENTION] says, they always can be provided later if an issue comes up like insurance or a sale. (Hopefully you'll be in the house long enough to see the fine day when AFCIs are recognized for what they are and relegated to the dumpster like Zinsco and FPE.)

-Hal
 
Absolutely not. I have yet to see independent testing results that actually show a quantifiable harm reduction through the use of AFCI's. I say independent because the manufacturer-supplied literature is biased, at best. They are after all, trying to sell a product.

My metric is, "would I feel OK not using them at my house, or my parents' house?" I sleep just fine at night with regular circuit breakers installed at my house, and my parents' house. In fact, my father asked me to install several at his house years ago, and we ended up removing them soon after because they'd randomly and inexplicably trip even with no load conductor attached.

I see GFCI protection as a much more demonstrably useful life safety feature. I'm actually surprised that we haven't seen more code-mandated adoption of GFCI.

As to those who say "It's in the code, so gotta do it no questions asked or answered," I think that's a lazy way out. They don't/can't protect against glowing connections (the largest source of electrical fires) and they trip when they don't need to. They've been foisted upon us by manufacturers, and all they do is cost our customers money.

My 0.02$


SceneryDriver

Glowing connections are largest source if only premises wiring is considered. Faulty / misapplied utilization equipment is the overall biggest cause of electrical fires.
I can’t remember what year the statistics were from, maybe 2015.
 
Jamaica has not yet adopted the NEC. My own opinion is AFCI is not worth the money. So, will not put it in except on a few circuits and then only as breaker. But, am using gfci. I actually believe in GFCI and RCDs...
 
If you are a professional and know residential why would you all of a sudden do work like that? Matter of fact I always over design my own work. If I was going to wire my own new home I would probably use MC rather than NM. As to whether I would install AFCIs- hell no. But as @growler says, they always can be provided later if an issue comes up like insurance or a sale. (Hopefully you'll be in the house long enough to see the fine day when AFCIs are recognized for what they are and relegated to the dumpster like Zinsco and FPE.)

-Hal

I have no intention of doing crap like that, I like things neat, and a properly done job holds up with time, omitting AFCI's is really the only thing I might considering doing if the trigger is pulled & get the flock outta here. One thing I really don't like is the electric CO-OP does not like UFER's & insists on a rod.
 
If you were building your own home in a location that did not have inspections, would you use AFCI's? A little background, I live in what is probably the hottest real estate market in the US, nothing like 14,000 homes being incinerated to change things overnight and want to get the hell out of California, downside not ready to sell yet, but thought it would be interesting to hear the opinion of others. The market is not going to be as crazy as it is currently, where people are paying as much as $50K over asking price in order to get a property, when it does correct there is going to be a lot of folks holding property worth less then what they paid for it. One location am considering has no inspections other then septic & I have held the opinion that the work that you do should be the same whether inspected or not, but really don't care for AFCI's.


I would not bother with them if you can get away with it, IMHO
 
If I had the chance I would never install another AFCI breaker. I have not in my experience saw one case that they did anything for increased safety. Nuisance tripping? Oh yeah. Extra cost? Oh yeah.

I wired my own house in 2000. Not one AFCI was required and none were installed. GFCI protection every where it was required.I sleep like a baby every night in this house.

Had a customer recently call me. Kitchen remodel from last year. Brand new sub panel for that area. All new wiring to the kitchen SABC, fixed appliance, and lighting circuits. Of course I installed AFCI/GFCI dual function type. Everything checked out fine. Passed inspections. No tripping. No problems. Homeowner call me an told me that he will experience nuisance tripping on these on occasion. What should I do? He asks. I said try changing a couple to GFCI only but I can't really do that. He did and reported back, no more problems. Now if there was a real problem on the circuit wouldn't the GFCI breakers trip as well?
 
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