Renosteinke said
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The real kicker was that remodels are often done on homes with obsolete equipment. When the older equipment has no ability to accept an arc fault breaker, the only option would be a complete service change ... which is quite an additional expense, when all the customer wants is another receptacle!

Now wouldn't that be a deal killer...

Customer: I need an outlet added in my spare room, right on the opposite side of the wall from the one in this bedroom....

EC: Sure, I can cut that in for you easy.. Oh by the way, I'll have to change that old fuse panel out to the tune of a couple grand in order to do this....

Customer: WHAAA???

So just adding an extension to an existing bedroom circuit is going to require me to AFCI it??? Makes me kinda glad I'm in the oilfields now [Linked Image]

As far as when I was doing service work, the requirements by local AHJ's to use AFCI breakers on a service change was kind of a mixed bag... Some required it, some didn't. Even then, they wouldn't require it on multiwire circuits (Siemens didn't have 2P AFCI's then... I'm not sure if they do now even.)