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The Daring Dufas[_8_]

On 6/26/2013 9:12 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 26 Jun 2013 09:48:35 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 6/26/2013 5:50 AM, RBM wrote:
On 6/26/2013 6:37 AM, wrote:
My neighbor just suffered a serious fire. His house had an enclosed
porch at the rear, with an open, roofed desk connected to the porch
rear. He had several GFI breakers out there, including one on the
rear porch wall. Around one AM, when he and family were asleep,
a fire started at that GFI switch (according to Fire Marshall), and
got going pretty good before their dog started barking. That saved
their lives for sure. Almost killed their dog and cat, though. The
fire badly burned the rear half of the house and sent black soot
throughout the rest of the house. The house is pretty well totaled.

That's what happened. I have to wonder how a GFI could do that!
I heard the Fire Marshall actually say that what happened was the GFI
wires arced, but that was not a 'short' to the GFI. Hence it didn't
trip. So, the GFI presented no protection did it! The arcing just
continued until it started the fire!

All this makes me think that my GFIs are not providing me the
protection I always thought they did. I'm not sleeping as well these
days.

Anyone have an opinion about this?

Thanks

me

GFCI devices don't provide short circuit protection. They provide ground
fault protection. The device that would have, should have prevented this
is the circuit breaker, or better still, an arc fault circuit breaker

I believe arc fault circuit breakers could prevent fires in homes with
aluminum Romex. I've heard sizzling inside many junction boxes in many
homes wired with aluminum Romex. O_o

TDD
Then they were not wired properly. Mine is over 40 years old and not a
single wiring problem - but I AM replacing all switches and outlets
with new COALR devices. Surprisingly, there is no such thing as a
COALR GFCI device available in Canada (according to my electrical
supplier) Need to use GFCI breakers

The homes I speak of passes inspection at the time using the guidelines
at the time. Aluminum wiring connections will degrade over time due to
the thermal and metallurgical properties of the wire. I've seen
connections fail even when antioxidant compound was used. O_o

TDD