ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area hot arc fault breakers

Whatever you do don't put general room lighting on an afci with your outlets. All it takes is one ceiling fan to become a real pain in the you know where. Don't ask how I know that ok?

I had a service call yesterday on a house I wired in March 2002. The bedroom wiring is protected by 1st generation AFCI breakers that I installed.

The owner knocked a lamp over in the bedroom and the bulb broke as it slamed to the floor causing the AFCI breaker to trip. Of coarse the yuppi homeowner was not able to find the tripped breaker.

Nice easy service call

I can't be sure what part of the breakers protective circuitry caused it to trip...

Was it an arc or a shortcircuit from the bulb smashing that caused the breaker to open?

I can tell you that I do have ceiling fans, florescent closet lights and smoke detectors on these AFCI circuits without any problem call backs ever.

shortcircuit

You must be lucky then,

I changed the way that I wire houses based on our problems in a large apartment building that was done. I don't know if it was the type of AFCI or maybe the fans but everytime the fans were put on they would trip about half of the AFCI's what a pain.

is it ok to install gfci recp. at 1st rect hole instead of arc fault breaker in the load center??

I thought everything in dwelling bed rooms had to be afci, plugs & lights?
not smokes?

Everything in the bedroom has to be AFCI, "all outlets" including smokes. I have even seen debates saying the outside light has to be AFCI if the switch is in the bedroom ... YMMV on that one.

What type of AFCI breaker is it? Square D has a recall on theirs. We have also had problems with motor loads on these circuits, especially with exercise equipment.

Here are the recall notices for the Square D products:
Consumer product Safety Commision (CSPC) ~ http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml05/05035.html
Square D ~ http://www.squared.com/us/squared/corporate_info.nsf/unid/9CB09A222974952E85256F19005EAE4F/$file/afcirecallFrameset.htm

I've been doing this since 2002; 25+ homes a year, and nver had a problem. I must be lucky, too.

I have heard a big part of the "fan problem" is leaving too much exposed insulation exposed on the usual neutral wire cludge and it shorts to ground when you shove all that stuff back in the box. In a regular circuit that will go unnoticed but the GFI function of the AFCI will trip.