ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area AFCI troubles

My two boys finished wiring a new house and said the AFCI breakers would not take a load. I checked the circuit with an anyliser and everthing checked out. I put a small load on the receptacle and the breaker tripped, I tried another AFCI breaker and the same thing. I put the load under a regular breaker and everything was fine. Both are Square D with one having a blue test button and one a green.My supplier says it's the circuit. Any comments?

Check all your circuit *carefully*. Somewhere you have a ground touching a neutral.

How many AF breakers will not hold 2? I would say the nutrals are crossed between the 2 tripping AF. Good luck.

Tom

Yep, that sounds familiar, had the same problem one day when I was working on a live circuit and tripped the AFCI breaker when the ground and neutral touched. Sandro is right.
Good luck
Ron

SquareD also had a recent AFCI recall. May or may not be related.

Your boys know they can't use shared neutrals right?

Larry, the SqD recall refers to AFCIs that don't trip when they should.

As far as the recall goes the green buttons are new and not part of that. The blue buttons are the first sign of recalled breakers. Look at the date code stamped on the sticker just above the terminal. It should be in red. The affected codes are CN, DN, EN, FN, GN, HN, JN. These breakers have been recalled and should be replaced.

Sugget you turn off power to circuit, disconnect the neutrals and ohm it out. If the neutral and ground are touching you should find it with an ohm meter. Good Luck

Home:

Did you ever get the problem figured out? If so what was it?