John,
One other thing, I don't understand why you need to get all suited up when a set of simple cover up gear would minimise the risk.
All you need is safety glasses, gloves and outers in this situation.
Trumpy
Some arc flash hazards are rated so dangerous that even a bomb technicians blast suit won't ensure survivability.
While a 10 calorie cover up might keep you safe in some large percentage of installations, there are lots of services in our secondary network area that require category 4 protection to rack a breaker. We have about 1 square kilometer area in the downtown that has typical fault current of 100ka. These faults can require 40 cal suits which I know you don't want to wear very long without some built in cooling system. If I had to do some live checks close to the source of that system I would be using insulated tools in addition to the rest of the PPR.
Working in a single family dwelling with a 200 am 1 phase service I would put on safety glasses and ordinary leather gloves. No synthetic clothing so a pair of jeans and a denim shirt are probably enough. Tape up the shaft of the screw driver and bob is your uncle.
