In the U.K., you just can’t have plugs in bathrooms (aside from the shaver plug), which is probably more sensible.
The latest National Electrical Code requires both AFCI and GFCI protection only in kitchens and laundry rooms, but if you're already doing AFCI, why not do it all everywhere as it is clearly to be required at some point
Main downside is they are expensive. I've recently installed a new 24-slot subpanel and I'm using them everywhere required. At $50 a pop, that's a quick $1200.
That dramatically lowers the cost.
The only real downside is that if you accidentally put your finger in the toaster, rather than just the power to your kitchen cutting off, the power to the whole house cuts off. I think thats a fine tradeoff to save $1200.
The annoying part is when I plug in some faulty device that is not immediately dangerous and that shuts down power to the whole house.
Do you mind, re-reading that statement? I don't even understand that argument. You should not be plugging in faulty devices in the first place...
Fault-tolerance is an important and useful thing.
I would absolutely like that to be safe. And like I said, if it's immediately life-saving, then I don't mind the power to the whole house being cut. But if it's "just" a bad appliance, then, well, I do find it a bit annoying that it reset all my electronics, and I would have preferred it if only that specific outlet was effected.
But I would still very much like the protection.
You'd rather have one circuit go out instead of the whole house, and if all you have is the one AFCI breaker you're going to have a much harder time identifying what device(s) is the culprit.
The only real downside is that if your app accidentally dereferences NULL, rather than just your application crashing, the whole computer crashes.
... Sorry, somehow reminded me of the early days of the Macintosh's OS before it was "true multitasking" (as the Amiga kids would love to tell us).
The AFCI thing is a money grab.
According to the CPSC, who analyzed some 10s of thousands of fires, something like 50% of them were caused by wire arcing that could be prevented with AFCI breakers. This is the exact reason why the NFPA is moving the NEC towards eventually requiring AFCI on every circuit in the house.
Do AFCIs actually do their prescribed function effectively?
Arc detection is also basically somewhat complex RF processing, so there are multiple approaches to it and implementations vary.
Plus (detected) arcs are common with for example brushed motors.
Maybe there's something else the person you replied to would like to highlight, but I wouldn't call them a money grab, just made difficult due to some past choices.
AFCIs are a whole different thing - the plug is trying to predict when arcing is happening somewhere downstream of it and it has very little in the way of 'processing' power to do it, so generally there is a classical filter that is designed to detect the characteristic harmonics of the current waveform that are inherent to an arcing condition. When you experience a sharp upward or downward step in power draw you introduce harmonics, when you have capacitive coupling between SMPS you introduce harmonics, motors often introduce harmonics, etc.
There's like a zillion things that can create AFCI trip conditions and cause spurious trips and frustration for users, and there's very few documented cases of them doing the thing they're supposed to do. I think it's a case of someone being well intentioned but releasing regulatory guidance to use a product that isn't quite there in terms of technology maturity.
See, this is the part I hate. I bet someone patented the design, then the NEC made it mandatory, and now they just rake in the money on something that likely costs <$10 to make. If something is legally mandatory, it should not be patented.
There are definitely bad feelings about these AFCI breakers. The feeling is that the code mandate for AFCI got out front of the reliability of actually-produced AFCI's, and actually-in-use products like blenders that may have small "arcing". This results in expensive call-backs from unhappy customers who are getting nuisance trips.
You do want your refrigerator on one. What when your mom is putting a metal saucepan into the fridge of leftovers, knocks and smashes the lamp inside, and the AC lamp power supply kills her though the metal saucepan?
What when a baby puts a fork into an electrical outlet in the living room?
What when floodwater comes in and kills everyone on the ground floor of your house while you are frantically wading in the water trying to move furniture upstairs?
There are plenty of times you want a whole house GFCI.
I don’t want whole house GFCI.
Your second claim could only be made by somebody for whom the first statement is true.
GFCIs are notorious for tripping on certain appliances like refrigerators and freezers, and can trip due to RFI from other devices in the house.
AFCIs do not like anything with a brushed motor, especially power tools and sufficiently large vacuums.
I have personally experienced all of these just in the last couple years.
lots of info here[1]
TL;DR: The US regulations prevent small electrical faults into things like swimming pools from causing people to drown. The european regulations will stop you getting killed by electricity directly, but won't stop you drowning if you happen to be in a pool while touching some wiring.
[1]: https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/218700/why-are-usa-c...
US electrical wiring always weirds me out. Cables run through walls without pulling them through hard plastic conduits and sockets that look like something designed seventy years ago. It's probably a matter of perspective, but it seems like such a completely different approach.
Whole-house GFCI is a good thing, but we should be careful to consider what you get for that. In order for GFCIs to coordinate the whole-house device is going to trip at a relatively high current. This is definitely on the edge of what will disrupt the heart of a person. American GFCIs are often at the device level on the outlet, so they are more error prone in terms of spurious trips but they are also much, much safer because they are substantially more sensitive.
In this case a Class C GFCI may be used to provide fibrillation protection, let-go-protection is optional.
A Class C GFCI is 20mA trip current.
This will not spuriously trip your freezer. If you're having issues with this it's because you're designing your power distribution system incorrectly.
I now make sure my fridge/freezer is NOT on a GFCI. I'll take my chances of getting a 120VAC shock from my fridge [which is attention-getting, but very unlikely to be injurious].
I’d be more quickly to find out my fridge died if the lights in the kitchen stopped working.
Not sure why fridges don’t just have a battery-powered alarm that goes off when the temperature gets too high for too long.
I upgraded them to not only a surge protector, but this little neat shut off device. It's a device that goes between the fridge and the wall outlet, and basically if for any reason this device loses power - it shuts off the power to the powered device for a minimum of 3 minutes. This way the power can blink 100 times in 3 minutes, and my fridge won't have to eat 100 surges. It will just happily sit off for 3 minutes, and then come back on.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D7KP8S4
But am not partial to this brand or anything. But it seems to do what it says it will do.
A fridge max power draw is usually during the defrost cycle. My defrost heater measures a bit over 500W.
Your fridge scenario is.. fantasy. What is the path to ground? There isn’t one.. you can hold onto a live phase conductor all day and not get shocked if the circuit isn’t completed.
Refrigerator only needs a GFI if it is within a certain distance of a sink.
> What when a baby puts a fork into an electrical outlet in the living room?
The NEC requires tamper-resistant receptacles in all dwelling units.
Also re: flooding and GFIs, all basement receptacles need GFI protection due to flood risk.
Not anymore. NEC 2023 requires GFCI for every 120 or 240V outlets in the kitchen, regardless of their location or proximity to the sink. This was a big change.
It’s a negligible cost change for new construction, AFCI breakers and AFCI/GFCI breakers are the same price, at least for Square D 120v 15A 1P
Disclaimer: I'm not an electrician
My understanding is that is not entirely technically correct.
You can have standard sockets in bathrooms in the UK.
But, and it's a big BUT, 99.999% of bathrooms in the UK are not big enough to be able to place the socket 3m away from the relevant wet "zone" (shower and/or bath and/or sink, IIRC).
However, IIRC, shaver sockets are OK, as are spurs. Irrespective of bathroom size.
Shaver sockets are typically going to have ingress protection.
https://www.tapwarehouse.com/blog/how-to-guides/understandin...
My (UK) fridge is on a standard 30A breaker which itself comes off a single 80A/30mA RCD which was presumably part of the regs at one point. It's never tripped. All the RCBOs I've seen are 30mA too.
(I have some sockets on a 10A breaker downstream of this which have tripped - the house needs a total rewire, total bunch of bodge jobs from the previous owner, including a 13A socket in the bathroom)
Does a GFCI typically have a lower trip that 30mA?
Why not? Here in Belgium they are required everywhere and that works just fine.
I used to work on residential construction jobsites and the only power on-site would be a pair of GFCI duplex receptacles in the basement beside the panel. Tripping the actual overload breaker was rare (and usually only happened when multiple people were running off a single extension cord), but the damn GFCI breakers on the receptacles themselves tripped all the time, particularly when the table saw was running at full tilt for 20 minutes straight. They're just too sensitive for certain applications. Now, you can buy combined overload/GFCI circuit breakers for in the panel, but they're ridiculously overpriced so no one uses them, and they're probably just as sensitive.