Do We Always Need AFCI in a Panel? Is There an Exception?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ธ.ค. 2022
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I comment recently came in from one of our followers asking the question “Can you please point to the code section that requires upgrading to AFCI breakers when changing a panel”. In the latest episode of Electrician U, Dustin answers this question along with giving some advice surrounding the topic of upgrades in general.
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Article 210.12 of the NEC governs the installation of AFCI devices and article 210.12(E) covers branch circuit wiring extensions, modifications, or replacements (this is where the information covering the question asked above resides). In a nutshell, if you replace, modify, or extend a branch circuit in any of the areas requiring AFCI protection, and it isn’t present before you start the work, then you are required to install it. However, there is an exception that is very pertinent to this type of scenario. Article 210.12(E) exception states that “AFCI protection shall NOT be REQUIRED where the extension of the existing branch-circuit conductors is not more than 6 ft AND does not include any additional outlets or devices, other than splicing devices. This measurement shall not include the conductors inside an enclosure, cabinet, or junction box”. So, if you added a circuit, a receptacle to an existing circuit, or added wire longer than 6 feet, you would be required to AFCI protect that circuit. But, if you were just replacing the panel and not adding any receptacles to the branch circuit or extending the wiring for the existing branch circuits more than 6 feet, then you would not be required to add any AFCI protection to the installation.
Having said that!! The NEC is a document; a set of guidelines to follow for electrical installations. These guidelines are meant to provide as much protection as possible for personnel and property when it comes to electricity. In addition, the NEC (of which the 2020 version is the most current) generally speaks in minimums & maximums and shall & shall nots. You can always go above and beyond what is listed in this document, but never install a lesser product/installation than required. In fact, the municipalities that govern the local area that we do our work in have the final say so in whether it is allowed or not. So, it falls on the electrical contractor to adhere to the local AHJ’s version of what they want to see. So, some areas may want you to install the AFCI breakers when replacing a panel, and it is certainly within their right to request that. Make sure you know the requirements of your local jurisdiction before performing (or even giving an estimate for) the work.
You should also answer your customers questions and/or let them know exactly what you will be doing and why. They are not in the business of understanding the NEC or the local AHJ and by explaining exactly what you are doing and why (along with the associated costs that go along with it!!) will at least help to avoid some sticker shock when they get handed the bill!! It also pays dividends to know of the code changes between the last code version and the current code (we do have a new code cycle looming around the corner so be ready for the NEC code changes 2023) as they change every 3 years, and you would have been installing/understanding of the prior 3 years code. There are books available that list the changes, in addition to the changes being noted within the new code book by symbol.
We hope this has been helpful in understanding the requirements of adding AFCI protection in an existing panel. Is there a topic you would like to see discussed on Electrician U? Leave us a comment in the comments section and let us know. Please continue to follow Dustin and Electrician U as we are constantly adding new content to assist our followers in becoming the best electricians that they can be.
#electrician #electrical #electricity #need #afci #panel #exception
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Nothing like switching out an old federal or bulldog panel, then having the homeowner say "some of my breakers keep tripping now. You broke it. It worked fine before"
True. 😆
Ahhh..... circuits with neutrals interchanged and multiwire circuits are 🥰😘lovely😘🥰 to find and fix in an old house where handyman have been screwing with the wiring over the years.
When all neutrals were tied together and now the arc faults don’t work lol
My friend renovated a whole house two years ago, and I did all the wiring from scratch, brand new panel, all new wiring and devices. Had one AFCI breaker that drove me crazy, tripping randomly after anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours, no rhyme or reason. It was a 15A lighting circuit with literally like ten LED canless ceiling lights on it; total draw on the circuit with all the lights on was about 2A. I changed the breaker three times and finally got one that wouldn't trip. 🤦🤦
If you call up siemens they will send you out new breakers.
Thank u, i'm watching from Guatemala, a small country in Central America.
Where i live, if using an AFCI type receptacle instead of a breaker, its required to use armored cable for the home run, but can use NM for anything past the first receptacle.
Great piece. You are doing a great job. Go on and on
Where did you get the tabs you have in your code book? Love all your videos and have downloaded/saved a LOT of them. Keep up the great work.
I work in IT as a datacenter architect. I have found AFCI breakers to be a pain in the ass when there is an upstream power protection system like a rack mounted UPS. I suspect some of the internal relays cause this. That said I like using AFCI breakers for most common outlets if I am replacing a breaker anyways.
I gave you a thumbs up solely on the licking my figures segment 🤣
I really don’t like Nuisance breakers. I’ve been seeing homeowners removing them maybe about 1/3 of new homes. It’s normally an old device that’s causing the trip event every time they exceed ~5 amps.
Anyone had any problems with Sine Wave type uninterrupted power supply/battery back ups tripping AFCI’s?
Still a good idea to add them
I have a detached shop with large overhead door and installing a heat pump (220 20 amp) I’m getting conflicting answers does the outdoor and/or indoor (220 20) unit(s) have to be on GFCI and/or AFCI by current code? Currently unable to get a clear answer from the inspector.
? I am about to do a kitchen remodel and want to do the electrical to code. I know I need to put GFCI’s above the counter. Do I put AGCI’s in the panel?
How is a AFIC going to work if for example if a existing feed was part of a multi branch circuit?
You have to use a two pole AFCI breaker, which is hard to find.
Podunkville lesson,
several years ago...
Except inside city limits county governing body was Assessor's Office. 📞 Called them up, if Electric Coop says it's ok then it's ok.
Over the backdoor the 60 amp service came into a fuse box with 4 15 amp screw in fuses and 2 FRN 30 amp cartridge fuses. The cartridge fuses provided 240 volts to the well pump, water heater, in the wall AC and electric range (either the oven or burners but not both). Of course you had to be careful not to turn on more than one load at a time.
They had me add a chest freezer to the 30 amp circuit. The Coop electrician said ok as long as the home owner knew to unplug the freezer before they pumped water, heated the water, ran the AC or cooked anything. 😖
Forgot to say the meter was the main disconnect. The Coop said to use dykes to cut the lock tab on meter collar, unplug meter, turn 90° and push into nylon tabs on meter base. They wanted me to call to have them reconnect. The guy was running late so he said to plug it in. If it didn't "smell funny" the work was probably "ok". He'd stop by on the way to work in the morning to lock the collar and look at my work. Said he'd call if he had questions.
I have a friend asking me to move a panel, from inside their office, into the bedroom of the apartment it feeds. It’s definitely more than 6’ from it’s current location. It also makes me nervous because we live in “podunk wherever” and they did the electric themselves when they built the building, and the building has been changed inside multiple times since it was first built. I really just want to tell them no, and that they’ll need to find someone else. I know there are things in there that are not correctly wired. The worst part is when he said to me “I don’t care if it meets code” 😳
Run away! I wouldn't touch it.
Ask him if he minds if you use speaker wire cuz its cheaper.
If he says "sure" ? Do not do it and quietly take a life insurance policy out on him.
If he is that stupid then it will pay off.
hi friend, can I use an electricity monitor between our cooktop range & the electricity wires to monitor the kw by the cooktop?
we have ariston elect cooktop range (2 burners) in our condo
It's hardwired to electricity wires (no wall socket)
We'd like to monitor the kw consumed by the range
I saw an electricity monitor (V, Amp & KW) online which has 2 connectors on top & 2 at bottom, my question: if I install the device between the electricity feed wire (lines in) & the cook range (line out), will it work & also give us the kw read-out? the monitor device is advertised to connect to the fuse-box. Do u have any alternative solution? Thank you 🙏
Okay so... Still haven't had a question featured in a video but I really want to ask you this one.
Ignoring anything residential and/or commercial, is there an NEC that 'only' deals in heavy industrial environments with medium voltage (480/680V)? I have been working as an industrial electrician for a while now and I've always wondered if I should just apply the standard latest NEC code book to my industrial work or not. Is there a sub-set of code that more greatly applies to industrial environments or am I over-thinking this?
Thanks for the videos and keep up the awesome work!
I'm sure there are additional code publication for certain applications, facilities, jurisdictions, but up to 600v the NEC is the go to even for industrial. (solar does go over 600 sometimes)
I love how the american code is pretty much identical to the CEC
could you please explain DIN Rail
not sure about you but in Canada we have the CEC (Canadian Electrical Code) and then provinces have their own codebook that builds off of the CEC.
If you're going to put in a panel in an area you haven't before, can you call the municipality to see what they might require?
I don't think people would care as much if they actually just worked without all of the nuisance tripping and they didn't cost 4 to 5 times more than a normal breaker. Both of those are a tough sell to a homeowner. Plus, people don't see how they are really safer. Everyone understands that they might drop a hair dryer in the bathroom sink or tub and kill themselves or their kids. They can understand the value of that. But putting an AFCI or Combo breaker in the living room just feels like it costs more to do the same thing.
Agreed, cost is a real issue, however as and electrical contractor don't forget, it's the law and if you don't do it you can be held liable when things go south. That is the biggest motivator to put this stuff in and make sure you know the code.
Fortunately my state basically did away with the AFCI requirement. More nuisance trips happened than anything else.
Don't lick your fingers to turn pages; lick the pages!
Hey Dustin, just wanna say the reason people lick their fingers to flip a page is because their fingers have dried out so much from the paper while reading, if someone is doing it all the time regardless of how dry their fingers are, then that's a separate issue.
So many compact DC power supply designs will trip AFCI devices it's just not worth the expense. I've got an LED nightlight that will set them off and there is absolutely no arcing taking place inside of it.
Just as there are historically poorly designed electrical equipment manufacturers that are commonly known by every one.
Hopefully 20 years from now residential service electricians won’t be cussing well known AFCI manufacturers whose electronic products historically failed.
Some are already leaning in this direction.
Properly troubleshooting each manufacturers latest updated product is the new service skill.
While visiting with a senior electrician, I was told of the high failure rate of GFCI technology when it was first introduced “back in the day”
too late, they fail left and right, nuisance trip like mad and have since day one and one good nearby indirect lightning strike may wipe them all out at once.
imagine nearly a whole house with the panel full of them, BANG. house is off and none will reset.
to be fair, I put a ton of them in a few places with old wiring, where they also had cobbled in grounded receptacles, with short jumpers bonded to neutral( the whole house!)
so, to cover my own "rear", I filled it full when fixing the other idiocy.
ELECTRITION U, you should check out that video of that other electrician, he had a bad problem, you were the first person I thought of for a review of what went wrong. VIDEO= nearly KILLED by a crazy fault.
Arr ground rods required for a subpanel in a detached garage.
The plumbing code book is also the minimum standards to a plumbing system. Not a good idea to lick your fingers when flipping thru it's pages either.
There should be a NEC requirement that fingers cannot be licked before turning pages in any version of the Code not owned by the user.
A major complaint is "My refrigerator trips those breakers," or, "The ceiling fan brush motor, vacuum, fireplace blower keeps tripping it." Would you ever do a video where you show that a vacuum or fridge does or doesn't trip these breakers? In my experience the breakers have gotten much smarter and don't trip on minor motor load uses. Great videos.
A motor has a considerable initial power spike when it starts which is the reason for the breaker tripping.
If it is a 15 amp with a Fridge ? then that is your problem. If it is something else then chances are there are
a number of different things drawing power on that circuit and when the motor starts it is just enough to
push it over the edge to pop the breaker.
They do with all sorts of loads. Keurig coffee makers. Laser printers. Vacuums. I've seen brand new square D, BR, CH, QO, and leviton trip even on dedicated circuits.
Yeah, they aren't as bad. But a critical circuit like smokes, fridge, freezer, and life safety don't belong on one period. I've gone to enough calls where their circuit tripped and cost them hundreds.
And at the end of the day, the only people winning are insurance and industry. Even the data they use to claim these help is misleading at best, bullshit at worst. These claims always come with the usual legalese drivel of " may prevent up to be x percent of these type of fires".
Then you put the numbers into perspective. The majority of fires happen in far older houses that were wired piss poor. Is it REALLY worth driving up the cost for homeowners who can already barely afford homes by thousands of dollars, for sometime that on a BAD year will affect less than 0.05% homes? Those odds are mighty slim, yet you get to pay an extra $4000 on average for a full panel LMAO. And get nuisance tripping and a breaker that maybe lasts a decade.
For added perspective, these aren't even total loss fires. These are typically minor fires that cost under $20K in TOTAL damages between materials, furniture, and structure damage.
People catching their homes on fire from cooking is still far more likely and with a much higher average cost LMAO.
It's all perspective
It's against the law for an inspector to enforce something that is not a written document per 90.4
Older people have less oil in their skin. That is why they lick their fingers to turn pages.
So your code book is kind of like the Bible: A minimum standard that most people kind of agree on. 😅
It app comes down to how picky your inspector is.
In other words, the NEC is as good as a bag of shit, since inspectors can ask for absurd things that even the code classifies as exceptions.
I have a question I have a 40 ft motor home/RV I am wanting to install a tankless instant hot water heater in it because they are cheaper to purchase than the regular ones they have unlimited hit water and the temp is remote controlled. Anyways the RV has a 50 amp system that is 2 legs of 50 amps the hot water heater is a 5.5Kw water heater and it requires a 30 amo 2 pole breaker do you think it would be safe to install a 30 amp 2 pole breaker? It's under the power rating for the RV and each pole would pull from a separate leg so isnit safe. Also how should I install it should I replace a couple of 15 amps with a tandem and then install the 2 pole 30 amp or should I add a small mini sub panel with a mini 2 pole 30 amp breaker? Any help would be great the only reason I even understand anything I just explained is because I watch your videos and I have been reading alot the model of water heater I'm trying to install is an Ecotouch 5.5Kw for reference. Any advice would be great thank you.
Please learn how to type before you attempt to perform any kind of technical work.
@@waytospergtherebro by the way smart guy I build custom sound systems so I am very capable of technical work. Including technical work involving electricity. But there are differences between the types of electrical work in the two. So once again don't be so quick to pass judgment. I could probably school you on a thing or two.
An AFCI is not required where there is a GFI protected circuit -
Basically replacing ALL regular inexpensive breakers for these wildly overbearing and extremely expensive 'protection' devices.
How many locks can you put on your front door before it becomes counter-productive to even have them on your door ?
THIS is an AFCI -- just too much for an absolutely negated payback.
Michigan no longer requires them.....Thankfully.
I saw that shit and started laughing at all the homeowners having to visit their breaker box once a day. Certainly the panel area will be cleared out for you though! 😀
The state of Michigan no longer requires AFCI's at all?