My proposal to severely roll-back AFCI requirements was rejected specifically because the committee was "not aware of any documented nusiance tripping of an AFCI with a listed appliance."
The comments I have heard made by a manufacture's regional rep as to which appliances will cause nuisance trips are not quite "documentation."
With the period for comments to the report on proposals now closed, we are not in any position to provide the committee with any evidence .. for now.
I sincerely hope that committe members read this thread.
More important, I hope that they, the AFCI manufacturers, and the NFPA take the time to read the US Supreme Court case "ASME vs. Hydrolevel." That's 435 US 556 (1982) for the lawyers out there.
The very basis for that case is that a manufacturer used his membership on code committees to obtain a ruling that put an upstart competitor out of business. The ASME tried to argue that they were not liable. They lost - big time!
IF such documentation exists, then the manufacturers of AFCI's are opening themselves up to major damage awards ... even a violation of the RICO act could be alleged. And, as Ken Leigh recently prooved, even the most successful executives, with the best connections, can be sentenced to prison.
Now, the idea that any 'confidentiality' agreement would require anyone to be a party to such a fraud raises some serious ethical issues.
However, I was also taught that science is based upon controlled experiments, with repeatable results. What happens in one lab ought to happen in another. If another lab just happened to duplicate the research, and come up with similar results, those results would be suitable for presentation to the code committee.
[This message has been edited by renosteinke (edited 11-29-2006).]
