Hi, everyone. Apparently it is now required in the builder’s code in Ontario that all bedrooms need to be wired through an AFCI breaker at the panel. Okay, fair enough, but the breaker switch is tripping over -
The brand new Ikea light that we bought for my son’s room
The brand new LED night light that we bought.
The older Ikea reading lamp that I’ve had for 4 or 5 years.
The Yamaha digital piano that I have rented.
So what’s the deal? These things work just fine in the other outlets in the house and it’s really starting to tick me off having to walk up and down the stairs to reset the breaker and unplug whatever has been plugged in. Am I supposed to take all this stuff back and demand a refund? I’m not proposing to remove the offending breaker - that would be against the code. I’m just questioning the point of this particular implediment, and wondering what I’m supposed to do about it.
You’ve apparently got a crappy, cheap AFI breaker or possibly a defective one. Sorry. Better units are far superior at rejecting false tripping due to the things you mention.
Total of four rooms - the two kids’ bedrooms, the master bedroom and the studio. No overhead lights, just outlets. There’s one nightlight on that circuit that hasn’t popped the breaker, and that’s the only thing that is plugged in at the moment.
Q. E. D. You may well be right, and that’s something we’ll start working with on Monday when the contractor is back in. At the present time, I’ve no way of telling whether it’s the AFCI that’s at fault or the stuff that’s plugged in.
Are you saying that any of those things by themselves trips the breaker, or that plugging all of them in at once trips the breaker? If it’s the former, I’d be pretty confident in saying that it’s a problem with the wiring/breaker, and not with all of those appliances. What are the odds that three different lamps and an electric piano all have such a defect, and all only exhibit the problem on that one circuit?
The former - any one of those things by itself will trip the AFCI breaker, and none of those things trips any other breaker in the house. There is only the one nightlight, currently in my son’s bedroom, that doesn’t trip the AFCI breaker. I haven’t experimented with other devices, having had enough stomping up and down two flights of stairs for one day. For the nonce, extension cords are in place so I can practice for the evening and I shall take this up with the contractor on Monday. I’m mostly curious if others have had this level of difficulty with that type of breaker switch - it sounds like the answer is ‘No!’.
This sparked my curiosity a bit. I’d never heard of AFCI’s, but apparently it’s in the NEC for bedrooms as of 2002, and as most communities adopt their codes by reference to the NEC, it looks like an American requirement, too. However I came across this note from the NEC: “Be sure to have a qualified electrician install AFCIs; do not attempt this work yourself. The installation involves working within electrical panel boxes that are usually electrically live, even with the main circuit breakers turned off.”
Huh? When the main breaker is off, everything is off. It’s identical to removing my meter from the can.
Also, what’s the technology that makes these work?
The main breaker only de-energizes the panelboard itself, the wiring and/or buss bars leading to the main breaker are still live and accessible in many types of residential load centers with the cover open.
Check out this Google cached article. It covers this topic more completely than I could.
Am I understanding things right in that for maximum protection one would need an AFCI at the breaker box and a GFCI at the outlet? Or would that be counter-indicated?
Rooms with wet bars and carpeting for instance should have both, the GFCI requirement is for wet locations, the AFCI is for areas where an arc could start a fire. I think the AFCI has to be the first device in the circuit to work properly, that is it should be ahead of the GFCI. There are also combination breakers available which offer both types of protection.
NEC 2008 requires all circuits in a residence to be protected by either a GFCI or AFCI.
This increases the cost of a new residential panel considerably. Cost goes from 5 dollars a breaker slot to 50. Average new home has 30 breakers. AFCI’s and GFCI circuits also can not share neutrals so using 12/3 or 14/3 to save cost is also eliminated. To install AFCI protection in a existing home often requires rewiring.
It is not required to have both covering the same location in any instance. In theory it would be safer. Most instances that trigger a GFCI would also trigger a AFCI.
AFCI,s are to protect against fires started by arcing wires. GFCI’s are to protect users from shock.
AFCI’s were introduced for the purposes of preventing fires from being started in the walls do to arcing. The original requirement for AFCI protection was only for bedroom lighting circuits not outlets. As AFCI technology became more reliable and less likely to cause a trip every time you plugged something in outlets were included in the required protection.
So, really, everything on the load side is off? I guess the NEC is just being overly cautious, because, well, duh, the supply side is obviously still hot. :rolleyes:
Yeah, that’s pretty much the size of it. But, I can sort of understand their caution, having personally seen many fine examples of DIY electrical work that by all rights should have killed someone. Believe it or not, there ARE people out there who don’t understand that the line side of a breaker is still live, even when the load side is de-energized.
Well, it seems to be an interesting problem with the Siemen’s brand AFCIs - they are too sensitive to be useful. The site claims that they have been tested to avoid nuisance tripping, but… Everything is fine plugged in as long as you don’t turn it on. Trying other brands, and we hope to have a solution soon.
It’s all reminding me of the smoke detector we had in an apartment I lived in one summer. Every time I had a long, hot shower, the smoke detector would go off. Any shower longer than about 6 minutes would do the trick. Then one evening, my wife and I were sitting in the living room when she said “Do you smell smoke?” We got into the kitchen in time to see the toaster oven at full blast, smoke pouring from it and the paint starting to blister on the kitchen cupboards above it. We doused it with the kitchen extinguisher, unplugged it, cleaned up the mess - never thought about it until the next time I took a shower about a week later and the smoke detector went off. “I see; what we have here is a shower detector”. The pieces of the old one eventually got swept out the door; the new one didn’t have that problem at all.
Not just inside walls, but inside things like extension cords or lamp cords run under rugs so they get stepped on. Crush a cord enough, and it can start arcing internally to the point that it heats up and ignites the rug/drapes/dirty laundry that’s on top of it.
To be NEC compliant you can not use breakers in a panel that are not specifically listed for that panel. Usually that only includes breakers that are the same brand as the panel.
Different brands use breakers that will fit physically in other manufacturers panels. 99% of the time if you use a cross brand breaker in a panel there will be no problems. Incompatible breakers can cause arcing between the bus bar and breaker do to a bad fit. Corrosion can occur between the bus and breaker do to incompatible metals
You won’t see a different brand breaker UL *listed *for use in a panel, but it is common for other brands to be UL classified and accepted for use in that panel. If you can manage to do so, the best way to go is to use only the same brand as the panel so there’s one less thing for the inspector to question.
AFAIK, Siemens breakers are the generic GE/Murray/Challenger/CH/Homeline style, so they may or may not be classified for use in other panels. Odds are that unless you have a brand-new panel, they will not be listed since AFCI breakers are so new. If the OP’s panel has a label saying that Siemens QAF breakers are OK, then all should be well, aside from that nuisance tripping problem.