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Below is a picture of the inside of my breaker box. What are the blue and green components marked "test". I believe they are something to do with GFI but my question is - what does this do as opposed to the breaker itself?
Reason I ask is last night we lost power due to a storm and the lights flickered a few times. Power has been restored but I did notice that one of the rooms had a flashing light on the component I'm asking about. This is a new house and my old house did not have these (that I recall). Why would this flash as opposed to just tripping the breaker? And since it was only one room is there something I should be concerned with or is this working as designed (power flickering causes it to trip)?
I recalled posting this a while back and wanted to follow-up.
We lost power for a minute last weekend. When the power came back up, there were 2 breakers that were tripped. Is this normal or something I should be concerned about. I understand if it were a breaker under heavy load but one was for the (empty) spare bedroom and the other was for the garage lighting.
The green are Arc Flash current interrupters and the blue are combination Arc and Ground Fault interrupters. With a power bump you likely had something that made a bit of an arc. It was most likely something that was plugged in with a connection that isn't real tight, but it could be a number of things. The AFCI is a lot more likely to trip than the GFCI.
Read up. They're basically a pain in the ass!
They were design for people who do stupid S#!T with electricity.
They are required n bedroom in some jurisdictions. They stink. They false trip frequently because many are defective, or become defective after a few years. I finally pulled home out and set them aside. I will put them back in when we go to sell the house. They must be in the top ten stupidest requirements ever. (right up there with the requirement for a hard wired smoke detector system.)
Maybe we are talking about different things. I am referring to the spark fault breakers or spark detection breakers. Maybe they have a different common name elsewhere. If they are GFI breakers, I have used them for decades without problems. they last longer/better than GFCI outlets. do.
Last edited by Coldjensens; 03-09-2020 at 04:30 PM..
...even worse when 12ga is required by local code.
Thanks! ROFLMAO!!!!
Oh, I'd love to the agreed upon reason for that!
Then again, politicians usually aren't electrians and got hoodwinked by electricians or their lobbyists. 0.4watts per unit doesn't even come close to a 12awg wire.
I built a house in 1980 and the village marked the plans no 14Ga all wire must me #12 minimum. I had a1200 sq ft ranch with 28 circuits. 14 ga was more than what was needed with circuits so lightly loaded but #12 it was IDIOTS
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