AFCI, The Shocking Truth!

AFCIs were developed in response to a need for equipment to sense when an arc fault was occurring.
Studies of building fires had attributed many electrical faults to an arcing type, which were igniting flammable materials within the building structure.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) asked the electrical industry to look at a technical solution to the issue of preventing fires by tripping circuits which were exhibiting power fluctuations due to arc faults.

AFCIs are able to detect faults as low as 5 amps (peak) for series arcs, and for 75 amps (peak) for parallel arcs.  They can also detect arcing caused by faults, such as dead-shorts due to nails and screws through conductors, and arcing due to lose connections anywhere in the circuit.


Now that I’ve laid the ‘ground work’ for you, I want to tell you about my first hand experience with Arc Fault Circuit Interrupters. My house was built less than two years ago, and my wife went to pull the ceiling fan chain last night and the fan quit working. I noticed immediately that the alarm clock light went out. So I headed to the basement to check the breaker. As I suspected, it was tripped, so I reset it and it tripped again. Okay, so now I realized it was time for the flashlight and time to check out the ceiling fan. To my surprise one of the light bulbs had come unscrewed a bit, and the metal pull chain for the fan was against the metal threads on the bulb. At the moment my wife pulled the fan chain the AFCI tripped the circuit, and thanks to the AFCI device my wife did not get the shock of her life! Furthermore, if this circuit had not been interrupted, and the ceiling fan was on and no one was at home, it could have started a fire. 

For more information on Atlanta Home Inspections, contact Anthony Martin.