Electricians: help me swap out an arc sensing circuit breaker

Bottom line is that I want my keezer with all of my other beer equipment in one of the bedrooms of my house. All of the bedrooms in my house have arc sensing circuit breakers which usually trip when a fridge kicks on. Doing this will also let me put my fermentation chamber in that room, which would be nice too. I have two spare standard circuit breakers with the same current rating as the arc sensing ones. The only thing that made me hesitate is that the arc sensing cb's have two wires going into them (a white and a black) while the standard ones have only the black. Can I just take the black from the arc sensing ones, put them into the standards, and put a wire nut or electrical tape on the white wires? Or, is the whole idea of this unsafe?

it's not unsafe(arc faults are a pretty new invention), but it's not up to code. if you want to do it, just put the white wire from the romex on the neutral bar, and put the black on the new breaker. obviously replacing the arc fault with the standard breaker

Okay good, that would have been my guess, but I prefer not to act on a guess with these matters. Thanks for the help.


d@mn code monkeys.

Agree with you there. Up to a certain point, building codes are a very good idea. But I've have multiple GFIs fail over the years and never had one activate protectively. Ditto, fire alarms. By code, I have to have three of them, all within a 12 foot span and all they ever do is honk for new batteries!

david_42 said:

Agree with you there. Up to a certain point, building codes are a very good idea. But I've have multiple GFIs fail over the years and never had one activate protectively. Ditto, fire alarms. By code, I have to have three of them, all within a 12 foot span and all they ever do is honk for new batteries!

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same here. i've been standing in water, using a drill and getting rapped off it, without the gfi tripping

kezgin said:

same here. i've been standing in water, using a drill and getting rapped off it, without the gfi tripping

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Duud. Cordless. Seriosuly.

kezgin said:

same here. i've been standing in water, using a drill and getting rapped off it, without the gfi tripping

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You sure the GFCI is wired correctly? These are solid state devices and are very reliable normally. I don't like to use them on refrigeration equipment because they can trip with a power surge. They are designed with fail safe in mind. IOW, they tend to cut the circuit sometimes too easily, but that's better than the other way around. My concern with the refrigeration is that I may not be around to reset the GFCI and the contents could spoil before I realized that the equipment was not running.

can't use a cordless right angle drill. at least not one that has any balls. and it was wired correctly, dedicated circuit with no outlets slaved off it. and it was one of those smartlock ones, which won't reset if they're wired incorrectly

Done. I'm pumped but also nervous. That's the first time I've ever done anything behind the front panel of the breaker box. I took the black wire out of the arc sensing breaker and put it into the spare. I took the white from the arc sensing and put it into the bar with all of the other white wires. Turned the power back on and the outlets in the bedroom work.

Coastarine said:

Done. I'm pumped but also nervous. That's the first time I've ever done anything behind the front panel of the breaker box. I took the black wire out of the arc sensing breaker and put it into the spare. I took the white from the arc sensing and put it into the bar with all of the other white wires. Turned the power back on and the outlets in the bedroom work.

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Keep the fire department on speed dial.

Stop it, you're scaring me. I did this right. This wasn't that complicated. I didn't f#$% this up.

After a little more poking around on DIY websites I am pretty confident. The breaker box really isn't that complex.

sounds like you did it fine

I'm a Icelandic electrician, had to google alot to know what romex, gfi & that arc suppression are

Just be sure that you have tightened everything nicely, loose screws cause sparks & sparks cause fires. A licensed electrician is needed by our law to change stuff like that.

White = neutral
Black/red = hot
?
We use blue as neutr & brown as hot

I am a licensed electrician in TX. A GFCI breaker or receptacle will not trip unless there is a difference in current between the hot and the neutral.(black and white wires) You can still be electrocuted by something that is GFCI protected if you get between the hot and neutral and the receptacle sees the same amount of current on both legs. They are not required when the load is a motor ie. a refrigerator or a waste disposal as long as that receptacle is dedicated to that piece of equipment.