GFI and AFCI

[NickD 202]

Just finished wiring my kid's garage and shed, in this building code, all outlets in these areas have to be GFI and had to install a safety kill switch in his shed even though it only has one outlet. So we had to buy a sub circuit breaker box for the garage and a kill switch for his shed, but with GFI, can't connect neutral and the ground wires together so we looked all over his town and mine for circuit breaker box and kill switch boxes with an insulated neutral bus. As usual, the sales people thought we were idiots, no such thing, but one guy did know about it and said we would have to buy a bus for the neutral and insulate it ourselves, that is what we had to do.

Tying the neutral and the ground together effectively parallels these two wires so roughly only half the current would flow through the neutral, that would kick out the GFI instantly. I also opted for GFI receptacles using a five buck circuit breaker directly to the first GFI receptacle that ran nine bucks rather than using a 45 GFI circuit breaker. Always had problems with these GFI breakers, the contacts in them just burn apart, even without excessive loads, so not only more expensive, but less reliable. Also they are hard to find around here.

Then is building inspector is talking about adding AFCI to their building code, had to admit, haven't heard about these devices, arc fault circuit interrupters. They are not even sold around here but see they are mandatory in other cities. A standard size circuit breaker that is supposed to know the difference between a loose or bad wiring connector or any kind of power switching device like a light switch, thermal breaker, centrifugal motor starting switch like in a refrigerator, or even a vacuum cleaner motor with commutator and brushes with a constant arching. My neighbor from New Orleans certainly heard about them, their building inspector insisted they be installed but are constantly being popped off. So after he leaves, they switch back to conventional circuit breakers. They love to use the example of a person hanging a picture on the wall, driving a nail just right to cause an arc in that plastic cable. Sure sounds crazy to me, but from some of the wiring I have seen, many of these fire traps should be rewired.

We also learned my son's electrical contractor is buddy buddy with the building inspector, so he doesn't like people doing their own work. While just a couple of outlets were in his garage, noticed this guy loves to use those push in wire connectors in the outlets. I hate those, just a tiny piece of metal making a point contact with not very much tension on it. Especially in a garage with excessive moisture, that contact corrodes very quickly, I did rewire all of those. Why do they even have those stupid point contacts on a receptacle?

Another thing that bugs me is these plastic box, almost impossible to find metal, so you have to run a bare ground wire to the switch or receptacle, on several boxes his electrician installed, that bare wire was a tiny fraction of an inch from the hot terminal. Outlets come with the screws out and the brass are hot even if you use the push in terminal, his guys were too lazy to screw those in with those screws sticking way out and bare wires everywhere.

At times, I like to use a insulated green wire tied to all the grounds soldered to all the bare ground wires and jam them to the rear of the box, with all those single strand 14 or 12 AWG wires, gets to be very difficult to jam that switch or outlet in the box, even have used white and black stranded wire soldered the same way and solder dip the ended for a good screw contact, so easy to put that switch or outlet in the box this way. Can see grounding an outlet, but a switch with just a tiny piece of metal that doesn't go anywhere on not exposed to the user? Do it anyway, because you are suppose to.

My first two homes used all metallic conduit, was nice, with a wiring problem, could easily pull new wires, today, you have to rip walls out for repairs. Just seems to me that the NEC is making all kinds of problems and trying to come up with stupid cures. Still don't know why they insist that the grounds and neutral be all tied together in main circuit breaker box and in 200 amp box, have bare wires running all over the place.

Kind of supports my thoughts that we live in a country ran by idiots, not only in electrical, but just about everything.