Hey, thanks for all the info in this thread! Will be looking into the whole-house surge protectors as well as what types of breakers we have installed.

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
A whole house surge suppressor is irrelevant to this discussion

Not completely irrelevant. SPDs will limit transient voltages which may kill your AFCI breakers. If you install $1500 worth of AFCI breakers, it's not a bad idea to install a $120 SPD with them to offer them some protection. Unlike GFCIs, which are really just running the load through an inductive coil, and connecting that coil to a micro-switch, an AFCI is a micro electronic device with a circuit board. You probably want an SPD to protect those.

Side Note: If you have a Square D panel with blue test buttons, some of those are recalled. Square D will replace all blue test button breakers with new ones, with the green buttons (parallel arcs, but not serial, or combination, breakers). IOW, not purple button, but green.

quote:

Side Note: If you have a Square D panel with blue test buttons, some of those are recalled. Square D will replace all blue test button breakers with new ones, with the green buttons (parallel arcs, but not serial, or combination, breakers). IOW, not purple button, but green.

I went through a pile of those a while back, they were straight up trash for nuisance trips. That's where a lot of the bad rep for these breakers comes from.

Where's our resident electrical expert?

Paging Skins2881. Skins2881 to the white courtesy phone, please.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
A whole house surge suppressor is irrelevant to this discussion

Not completely irrelevant. SPDs will limit transient voltages which may kill your AFCI breakers. If you install $1500 worth of AFCI breakers, it's not a bad idea to install a $120 SPD with them to offer them some protection. Unlike GFCIs, which are really just running the load through an inductive coil, and connecting that coil to a micro-switch, an AFCI is a micro electronic device with a circuit board. You probably want an SPD to protect those.

That will depend on the clamping voltage , etc. of the device . Huge variance in the efficiency of SPD's . That's a whole different discussion .

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Where's our resident electrical expert?

Paging Skins2881. Skins2881 to the white courtesy phone, please.

Yes? I've read thread not much to add.

Diagnosis made, breaker is bad if it's allowing power through. If it wasn't that obvious then Sig Vicious' troubleshooting is the next step, but you have to transfer neutral too.

Everything sigcrazy7 has said is accurate, he has not experienced problems because he started using them after many issues were fixed. First generation, even second iterations were garbage and tripped/failed constantly. Newer ones are fine, many "problems" with them is them actually doing their job. Like sigcrazy7 I've remade every connection in my house so I am not worried about nuisance tripping.

I was thinking more about the question of replacing AFCI/CFCI breakers with non-AFCI/GFCI breakers, really.

I'd recommend against removing safety devices. I don't know the legalities of potential insurance claims or other concerns.

OP, how old is the breaker? I believe Homeline has a ten year warranty. You can check the date code to the left of the lever (first two digits are year, second two are the week of mfg). If they are older (pre 2005?), they will have a sticker near the hot wire input with a two digit date code. First digit is month, second is year. So "EN" would be May, 2005. I,O,Q are not used.

At least drop it off at an electrical supply that is a Square D dealer. They can submit it, and perhaps in a few months you can get a replacement breaker for free. Especially if your house is less than ten years old.

Not a bad idea.

same issue recently here with a 12yr old house bought new. garage randomly trips its afci breaker. the gfci part is the gfci outlet in garage wall. had the whole system thoroughly inspected and was told the breaker needs replacement. and suggested to replace all the afci breakers and a whole house surge protector. that after so many "trips" they wear out and will just continue to trip regardless of any downstream corrections. and was also advised to replace with the afci and not a regular breaker. so as others have said and advised you'll probably just need to replace the breaker and check all the downstream wiring and outlet and switch connections.

quote:

I believe Homeline has a ten year warranty.

I think I remember a rep telling me that they carried the same lifetime warranty as QOs do.

UPDATE…again

Put the new breaker in. SAME result. As soon as I turn on the main, it trips, and yet it still is supplying power to the garage circuit. Even when switched OFF, it still supplies power.

I unplugged everything on the circuit- same result. As far as I can tell, I wired it up with the same 2 wires connected to the original breaker. I used the only loose wires in the panel I can see- a single black hot and a single white neutral. The black wire is connected to the breaker’s brass terminal, the neutral to the silver.

I didn’t make any changes to the panel before this started happening.

With a Fluke:

Hot terminal to ground: 0 Volts whether tripped or Off
Neutral terminal to ground: same

With 0V on the hot, how the hell is it powering the circuit??


From a good breaker:

Hot terminal to ground: 120 Volts when on
Neutral terminal to ground: 0 Volts

WTF.

UPDATE yay.

I just found out that the neutral I attached to the breaker has 120V on it. Uuugh.

I’m about at a loss.

Open each breaker in the panel one-by-one until you have no voltage on that grounded conductor. That will at least identify which circuit is incorrectly wired. You probably have a different circuit using this circuit's neutral. The more likely place for this to happen is in multi-gang switch boxes with more than one circuit feeding that box. Somebody doing the finish probably just took all the white wires and put them under a wire nut, not realizing that more than one circuit is in that box. This is creating a GFCI fault.

Did you recall the trip from the breaker? Is it reporting a GFCI trip?

Turning off one of the furnace breakers takes the voltage off that neutral. I have 2 furnaces side by side.


If I follow your steps, it was a GFCI fault.

SOLVED. The hots coming off the garage outlet breaker and furnace breaker were swapped. I have no idea how that happened. I don’t even recall disconnecting the furnace hot because I didn’t have a reason. I’m still a bit confused as to how that would have energized the garage outlet neutral line. Could the circuits have worked for several years like that, or am I the dumbass that just doesn’t remember disconnecting the furnace hot and switching them?

All appears normal so far.

I need a cocktail.