ARC Fault Breakers. Your Experiences.

[Chris616]

I am building a load shedding system which is in a cabinet adjacent to my load center. I have to run my heating circuits into this new box. But if the wires are not long enough and you can't make connections inside the load center cabinet, sp what is a guy supposed to do? Can you solder connections or something to make them compliant?

I can't find a reference to the CEC, but it is fairly closely aligned to the NEC used by our neighbours to the south. From what these references say, it is legal to make splices in a circuit breaker enclosure.
Splices Permitted in Panel Enclosure, NEC 211 - 312.8 (2min:47sec) - YouTube
Wire splices in panelboards -

Mike Holt's Forum
Code Quandaries | EC&M

Chris

(A pet peeve of mine - it's in everyone's best interest if people follow the NEC (in America) or CEC (in Canada). Fewer people will be killed and less taxpayer money spent on fighting fires. Our federal governments should subsidize their production so that the NEC and CEC are available free of charge to everyone.)

 

[Industrial Toys]

The printed rules are often difficult to interpret. And inspectors all have their own take on it and often their own ideas of what they want and don't want to see.

Places like home Depot sold books makeing it easy to understand the code but things like splices in load center enclosures likely are not mentioned.

 

[buickanddeere]

AFCI and GFCI are not for use on smoke detectors circuits , sump pump circuits , home heating/cooling circuits and on fridges/freezers .

 

[grsthegreat]

AFCI and GFCI are not for use on smoke detectors circuits , sump pump circuits , home heating/cooling circuits and on fridges/freezers .

agree whole heartily...but the code says different. says EVERY residential 120 circuit that is not GFCI protected shall be arc fault protected...but not in my house..EVER

 

[buickanddeere]

agree whole heartily...but the code says different. says EVERY residential 120 circuit that is not GFCI protected shall be arc fault protected...but not in my house..EVER

Canadian Electrical Code allows exemptions for kitchen fridge, some smoke detector applications and sump pumps.

 

[grsthegreat]

Canadian Electrical Code allows exemptions for kitchen fridge, some smoke detector applications and sump pumps.

did not know that . as far as i know, the NEC does not. Idaho has not (so far) enforced the arc fault requirement for entire house, but Washington state has. were probably not too far behind

 

[Industrial Toys]

Funny that they admit how useless and unreliable they are.

 

[fried1765]

Canadian Electrical Code allows exemptions for kitchen fridge, some smoke detector applications and sump pumps.[/QUO

Could that all be about (unreliability) nuisance trips?
Yah think?

 

[buickanddeere]

Canadian Electrical Code allows exemptions for kitchen fridge, some smoke detector applications and sump pumps.[/QUO

Could that all be about (unreliability) nuisance trips?
Yah think?

Yup Yup

 

[fried1765]

Yup Yup

Of course!

So SOME circuits need protection,...... but some do not?
Makes perfect sense to me.

 

[ultrarunner]

When building the new hospital wing there are circuits where GFCI and Arc-Fault are prohibited...

 

[grsthegreat]

When building the new hospital wing there are circuits where GFCI and Arc-Fault are prohibited...

Hospitals are exempt for lots of code requirements.....and the hospital grade mc wire sucks to work with. Hospital grade outlets are crazy expensive. Their systems use a kind of double grounding system.

 

[ultrarunner]

Yes... lots of mc with ground even 25+ years ago...

 

[3Ts]

See the attached diagram. These two setups both have four ground fault protected receptacles. The first way is more expensive, but it has the advantage of not killing power to the other receptacles if either of the first two upstream GFCIs sense a ground fault and trip. That might be important if, for example, a freezer in a garage is plugged into the downstream receptacle but the upstream receptacle has something plugged in that has a history of tripping the GFCI.

Chris

View attachment 634000

Interesting, now I wonder which version I have. I'll have to go test it.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Well, just yanked the two Siemens Arc Fault breakers in my Barn, as I wanted to tidy up my storage room and prefer some light.

Just read that neutrals getting tied together from seperate circuits can cause tripping. Wish I had read that earlier so I could have taken some measurements when the panel was open and neutrals disconnected. It is a possibiity that neutrals got crossed in multi gang switch boxes.

 

[arizona98tj]

When we built our new house seven years ago, ARC Fault Breakers were required in certain rooms according to our state's building code which our local municipality strictly enforced. So much for rural living! Couldn't escape the code enforcement bureaucracy.

The electrician agreed they can be problematic. I asked what to do if they became a problem. I was told to toss them and replace them with standard ground-fault breakers. Going on seven years now, so far so good. I hope I didn't just jinx myself.

Five years ago, we had a new house built here on the homestead. State code required a combination arc fault/ground fault breaker for specific circuits. Others could run on just ground fault breakers.

This summer, our gas range started tripping the breaker. 110 volts is required for the ignitors and the circuit board that manages the oven temperature and timer. Long story short, we finally troubleshot it down to the breaker tripping ONLY WHEN the fridge was running AND my wife turned on the oven....that was the only time it would trip. We had changed nothing in the kitchen in 5 years. I swapped out the breaker for an identical one from another circuit. Same exact problem. Logic says something in the fridge is causing the problem but the tech could not find a problem. Whirlpool's support line (that is only for service techs) said "We can't tell you to get rid of that style breaker but we have lots of complaints just like yours."

I had a spare ground fault breaker and replaced the combo unit with it. My wife can now bake while the beer is getting cold! In my book, that's a win-win!

 

[CobyRupert]

It could be the fridge or an arcing connection, but it just might be that the current (pulses) drawn by the igniter look like an arc (because it is an arc). However, perhaps when operated by itself, the ignitor doesn’t draw enough current for its arc pulses to trigger a breaker trip.
It may be that when the fridge is running you have enough current combined with the igniter pulses that it meets the threshold for the breaker to think it’s an actual arc fault.
2 cents.

 

[arizona98tj]

It could be the fridge or an arcing connection, but it just might be that the current (pulses) drawn by the igniter look like an arc (because it is an arc). However, perhaps when operated by itself, the ignitor doesn’t draw enough current for its arc pulses to trigger a breaker trip.
It may be that when the fridge is running you have enough current combined with the igniter pulses that it meets the threshold for the breaker to think it’s an actual arc fault.
2 cents.

Thank you for your input....it is much appreciated.

We (the tech and I) disassembled the range and thoroughly checked the wiring. We found nothing suspicious inside the range. He even put in a new module for the oven but that made no difference. We didn't rip the back off of the fridge to check it. One thing I didn't mention....when we plugged the range into another outlet (different electrical circuit, same style breaker) which separated it from the fridge, everything worked properly and no breakers were tripping. It left both of us scratching our heads. Why it worked just fine for 5 years and then didn't is a question that probably won't ever be answered. It's been nearly 6 months since this occurred and all continue to work just fine with the GFCI breaker I swapped in.

 

[grsthegreat]

honestly, take the refrig off of the gfci circuit all together. i will never let a refer or freezer i own be on a gfci circuit. up until the last house i wired a few years ago (now retired) i NEVER placed a kitchen refrigerator on a gfci circuit and inspectors never cared since the circuit was not readily available for anyone to plug anything into it anyways.

we always ran 2 kitchen convenience circuits from electrical panel to kitchen. the first went to refer first, then jumped to closest countertop receptacle (unless it was a sub zero refer that required dedicated outlet) which would become a GFCI circuit for 1/2 the kit outlets. the next home run went to the next countertop outlet location becoming the 2nd GFCI circuit. than we alternated outlets as we wired the rest of the outlets in. refer was never GFCI'd. no inspector ever cared.

with new code changes coming into effect, im not sure if i would be able to get away with this anymore. but since im retired, who cares.

 

[CobyRupert]

Best practice is for fridge to be on its own dedicated breaker.
You don’t want somebody plugging in a microwave, toaster oven, etc... popping the breaker, and either forgetting about it or shrugging and then going to work or school for 12 hours before somebody realizes the fridge and freezer have been unpowered all day.