On Tuesday, February 23, 2016 at 12:51:01 AM UTC-5, Texas Kingsnake wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Mon, 22 Feb 2016 23:04:09 -0500, "Texas Kingsnake"
wrote:

"Uncle Monster" wrote in message
...
On Monday, February 22, 2016 at 12:15:58 PM UTC-6, Texas Kingsnake wrote:
Gentlemen and women:

I am not sure if you all remember, but I had the circuit breaker panel
with
the bad aluminum feeder cable that was shooting sparks.

We finally put the new panel in yesterday -- by *we* I mean *I* stood
around
while my electrician buddy did the work. We used 6 AFCI's in the panel
for
the bedroom and kitchen circuits. When it came time to power the panel
back
up, AFCI breaker number 6 refused to latch.

Here is the big question: How do you locate the arc fault that's
tripping
the breaker? In this old house the wire is buried deep in plaster
walls
and
routed from the basement up to the attic and back down again, FWIW,
it's
not
K&T, just old cloth-covered wiring from the 40's. My buddy had a word
for
it I had never heard before -- ragwire.

TKS

Have you checked to see if it could be a defective table lamp, light
fixture
or appliance. Some items that you may think that would never cause a
problem
are doorbell circuits or a clock radio. An engineer friend who worked for
the power company communications division would often track down RFI
caused
by doorbell transformers which were sizzling/arcing but not drawing
enough
current to burn up or trip a standard breaker. You may have a light left
on
in an attic or basement/crawlspace that has a burned center contact or
rivet
at the bottom of the socket shell that is arcing. I've seen all sorts of
weird crap cause problems in electrical and electronic circuits and only
discovered them by eliminating every possible cause. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle Arc Monster

You have all laid out some serious detective work ahead. Nice to know
that
there are lots more things to look for. groan I think I have a pretty
good idea where to start looking.

Someone on a electrical website suggested taking the AFCI breaker and
mounting it on a cord so I can plug it into outlets on the circuit and
see
if it trips -- at least that way I can keep the circuit live on the old
breaker while testing for the location of the arc fault. Someone else
said
the breaker wouldn't trip if it wasn't under load, even plugged into a
circuit with an arc fault.

We did replace one outlet -- I pulled it from the wall while live (don't
tell on me!) and I saw sparks coming from the internals of the outlet.
Replaced it, but that didn't solve the problem. I guess like I said
elsewhere it is time for "grunten and cranken." Cripes. I am sorely
tempted just to leave the old breaker in place and remove all the heavy
loads from the old circuit. Running two new grounded outlets, a real
bitch
in old houses like this, doesn't seem nearly as much work as has been
described in locating the fault.

What I really need is some way to remotely switch back and forth between
the
old breaker and the new AFCI one so I can see the effects of removing
loads
one at a time. I guess the reverse of that is to disconnect all loads,
power up the circuit and if it holds, add back the loads one at a time
until
I find the mutha frakker that is doing this. If the breaker even holds,
that is. If it doesn't that means doing what has already been described
by
Don and others. Digging the wires out of the wall. Not gonna happen.
If I
am going to tear up plaster, it is going to be to install new grounded
romex.

What a cluster-frak!

TKS

Start by unlugging EVERYTHING. If that fixes it, you are lucky - it's
likely not IN the wall. Then plug things in untill it trips. If
unplugging everything doesn't fix it, start disconnecting outlets.

That is generally what I am doing but I need to run extension cords from
other outlets to keep the router and other essential items running while I
test. What a cluster frak.


Router can't be down for an hour? What did you do when you replaced
the panel?



Remember the arc can be either a series arc or a parallel arc.

What is this? There is more than one type of arc monster to deal with? Say
it isn't so!

A series arc is an intermittent open in nature - a parallel ark is an
intermittent high impedence "short". Those can burn the house down
without a load attached and are the difficult ones to trace.

They all seem to be difficult to trace. I assume a partially inserted plug
causes a series fault while a nail through the wire causes a parallel one.
More reading to do.

I wish this stinker just worked when we turned the panel back on. He
charged me $750 for the panel replacement (20 breakers in all) and it took 6
hours. That seems to be a pretty good price for panel replacement and he
did a very neat job. This AFCI thing was just circumstances beyond anyone's
control. As ****ed off as I am by all the extra work that is involved, I
suppose I should be thankful that the AFCI discovered the arc fault, and not
the firemen.


Since this is apparently so much trouble for you, why don't you just pay
your electrician buddy to fix the remaining problem?