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I'll wait till I am required or they start making AFCIs that actually do the job they say they will.
Up to this point I have still not even touched an AFCI breaker.
Not required in commercial work.
Bob Badger Construction & Maintenance Electrician Massachusetts
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Joined: Aug 2005
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That could be an almost impossible task to do some service changes. 4hrs service change... 16 hours trouble shooting and fixing. ooh that would be crappy.
I havent had to do arc faults on any service change..
I have had to do, arc faults and connected smoke detectors through-out for additions.
Shake n Bake
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Joined: Jun 2004
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I changed my service (100A zinsco to 100A QO) and I only did AFCI for bedrooms and the living room. I'm not really worried about romex as I am a table lamp, which the cord might get caught under a chair leg or something. I do have 3 knob and tube light circuits, but generally there's less chance of an arc because the wires are almost stud length apart (except at the terminations because of degraded insulation.)
My AHJ is pretty good on the AFCI. For example, it is city code that for any abandoned (as in taxes not paid) building, in order to be resold, must have all new wiring, gas, and plumbing. They MUST have AFCI in the bedroom, and the city was offering a tax break on up to 2 additional OPTIONAL AFCI's. Our inspector is pretty uptight, but with good reason, especially since the houses are so close together. (I'm not 100% sure if it city code not to granfather, or if it per contract, but the city treats it just the same)
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The currently available AFCIs will not protect the lamp cord.
Yes that is what they where supposed to do....but they don't.
Bob Badger Construction & Maintenance Electrician Massachusetts
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If you are doing service upgrades and you are putting in ark faults and making money at that then I like it. You should be making money, and I like ark fault breakers. That said, the code does not require ark faults on service changes, the 2005 code requires ark fault protection for the branch circuit when installing 120 volt 15 and 20 amp outlets in bedrooms of dwellings. When you are doing a service upgrade and you are not installing 15 and 20 amp 120 volt outlets in bedrooms of dwellings, than the ark fault requirement should not be applied to you, unless your area has an ammendment to the code that requires ark fault breakers on service changouts. If your local electrical inspector requires it, you should ask him for a code reference, unless you like installing and upselling the customer as the original poster does. Again, I myself like that style, but I personally stop short of trying to sell the value of ark fault breakers to customers because of the potential of liability of a series ark not interrupted and an ensuing fire is the result.
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I've said it before in another forum and I'll post it here for the masses: "Arc-fault breakers are the airbags of the electrical industry." [rant on] Another useless piece of junk which has the (high) potential to either malfunction or worse, provide a false sense of security.I have yet to see any organization or the NFPA for that matter prove statistically that arc faults are suddenly extremely important to protect the public. Maybe I need to think up some useless piece of garbage that will allegedly make the world's electrical systems safer and buy my way into making it a Code requirement. [rant off]
Stupid should be painful.
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I've said it before in another forum and I'll post it here for the masses: "Arc-fault breakers are the airbags of the electrical industry." I would not say that, no matter what info you look at airbags have saved many more lives than they have taken. Approx 260 deaths have been attributed directly to airbags. Most estimates of the lives saved are between 10 and 20 thousand. Even if you reduce those figures by 50% assuming they are 'hype' air bags still come out ahead. In other words air bags routinely do what they are intended to. I have not seen a single bit of evidence that an AFCI has saved anyone. I have seen fairly convincing arguments that say by the time you need an AFCI it will be malfunctioning. (Assuming it worked as intended in the first place)
Bob Badger Construction & Maintenance Electrician Massachusetts
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Renosteinke said 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 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.)
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You can always put in a sub panel with your arc faults in it even from an old fuse panel.
Greg Fretwell
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Just to be clear, I personally have never advocated requiring AFCI's for re-models.
Yet, I have encountered those who would. Some take the position that "anything, even if it saves but one life, is worthwhile" ... and have never heard ot the Constitution's prohibition of 'ex poste facto' laws.
These nomrods WOULD require a single new receptacle to be AFCI protected. And, since other nimrods, again in the name of greater safety, have effectively banned any AFCI devices, this means a breaker. So, we're back to a new sub-panel, with a homerun, at the least, for adding a single receptacle.
Or, as is the case here, the AHJ can decide that this is hogwash ... and not accept the code as written.
To return to the original question: Here I have not heard of even a service change requiring AFCI's. Only in new construction; and even there the inspection seems limited to bedroom receptacle circuits. SMoke alarms are generally not on AFCI circuits, and the lights are often "overlooked."
[This message has been edited by renosteinke (edited 12-06-2006).]
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