ECN Forum Forums Code Related Discussion NEC & other Code issues AFCI's Track Record?

The State of Michigan finally adopted the 2002 Edition of the NEC. The hold up was blamed on the builders association determination to have the requirement for AFCI protection removed from the Michigan Electrical Code. (NEC + Amendments = Michigan Electrical Code) Can some of this group give some critique on AFCI's? The 1999 Michigan Electrical Code had AFCI's removed from the code. Thanks gang in advance for your report.

I hate AFCI.
We did an appartment building with 100's of those. It seemed like 1 in 6 or 8 appartments would have one trip right away. After pulling everthing all apart and checking for nutrals, nick wires, bad splices, etc. nothing was ever found but the trouble would go away. Everything was fine (all #12's in pipe with ground wire).

I can't say for sure but it seemed like it had something to do with the closet floresents. I think if 2 of these lights tried to turn on at the same time (by turning on the breaker with the light on) it would cause a faulse trip. While messing around with things looking for the trouble one light might have been switched off causing things to work.

After a some of these we would pull the pullchains on the closet lights if we had a tripping problem and that seemed to take care of things.


Another point an inspecter said was the bedroom smoke should be protected with an AFCI per 2002 but do you really want a smoke protected by something that trips easily?

My point is what kind of trouble is the home owner going to have with faulse tripping from cirtain things.

Long live Federal Paciffic Stab Locks I guess.

Tom