For sometime now, every time my bathroom light is turned one it has tripped 2 AFCI breakers for the living room and hallway. It will flip one or the other every time without fail. It has been doing this for about 3 weeks now. I've reported it to my landlord who just today sent out an "electrician". Now said "electrician " rewired my house about 2(?) years ago. He was acting very strange, and didn't really want to check any of the breakers in the box, just told me to, "wait two or three days and not use the light-switch, so that we can be sure it's the switch throwing the breakers and not anything else".
I feel like there is something else going on, maybe shoddy wiring, because I asked the electrician to explain a couple of reasons as to why we should do this and his answer was, "we need to talk to the landlord" and see if he agree's to it.
I have 3 children that live in my household as well as 2 other adults. The adults all feel as if they are hiding something, considering that every time the breakers flip it takes out the front of the house, living room, or it takes out the hallway, the middle of the house, which is really irritating. I really just want to call out my own electrician, but I don't want to do anything that breaks my lease. I'm kind of stuck and don't know what to do. All I know is that my landlord and the "electrician" he sent out, don't really like me asking questions about why it is flipping the breaker. It doesn't make any sense to me. I really would like some help.
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I am not a fan of AFCI breakers. They are a good idea in theory but there seemed to be a rush to put them into law. That being said, you need to work with what you have.
Most times when a breaker trips, it is because it is doing what it is designed to do.
Could the switch cause the breaker to trip? I am told yes. I have not experienced it personally, but I am told that early AFCI breakers could trip from the arc in a switch.
To assist in troubleshooting, remove the lamps (light bulbs) and see if switching with no load causes the breaker to trip. If it does not, consider switching technology for the lamps. (incandescent versus CFL versus LED). If it continues to trip under no load, have the electrician change the switch. If it still trips under no load, change the AFCI, If it still trips under no load, it is the wiring and I would look for another apartment.
Some AFCI breakers have LEDs which are meant to help troubleshoot why the breaker tripped. These can be useful to determine if the breaker tripped due to a grounding arc, a non grounding arc or simply an overload.
If the AFCI was added to existing wiring (not original installation), it is possible that the breakers are on a shared neutral (two hot wires from separate breakers with one neutral wire return to the panel). This will cause nuisance trips for this type of breaker. The solution involves rewiring to eliminate the shared neutral. Rewiring is not cheap.
I hope this helps.
Good Luck.
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