On 13 Sep 2004 20:36:38 -0700, (balboni) wrote:

A tenant of mine had an outlet start sparking after trying to plug a
lamp into it. There is an air conditioner on the same circuit as
well. The sparking was bad enough to melt the side of the outlet
where the wire get screwed in. Shouldn't the circuit breaker have
tripped? Do cicuit breakers go bad such that they do not trip when
they need to?

The circuit breaker only trips if you have an excessive amount of
current flowing through it. In this case the outlet failed internally
but the only current flowing was to the other devices on the circuit
so the breaker was not overloaded.

This is a problem and current code requires the use of arc fault
breakers in bedrooms that would trip if this were to happen. I
wouldn't be suprised to see the arc fault breakers become a code
requirement for all convenience circuits in the next few years.

Steve B.