Insteon signals tripping breakers
- Thread starter raymondh
- Start date
Work2Play said:
The double breaker allowance should be right on the sticker on the door. Some 30 space / 40 circuit panels allow the bottom 5 on each side to be doubles. If there are doubles elsewhere then you are exceeding the UL rating of the panel and should look in to adding a 100 sub panel or two and back pulling the circuits in to the new sub panel.
Frederick C. Wilt said:
Nope. Sold them on Craigslist. Sold the house 3 months ago, inspector said not a word.
Those things are a damn joke. Someone figures out how to make a breaker that costs a ridiculous amount of money, then they hire lobbyists to change laws and codes to force people to buy them.
For the OP: If it were me I would consider purchasing a regular, appropriately sized breaker and replacing an arc-fault breaker that often trips with it, just long enough to see if it solved the problem (i.e., run those programs 8 or 10 times). You could then look for alternate (perhaps newer or different manufacturer) arc-faults and get both Insteon reliability and better protection. But if you are not familiar with how a breaker trips, then no offense but you don't need to be working inside a panel. So call an electrician, have all parts on hand (such as replacement arc fault breakers that fit your panel but from a different manufacturer) and explain the problem and your goal to him. With proper planning you can likely resolve this ine one visit.
Also, these MAY be GFCI breakers, which take the place of a GFCI outlet as first outlet in a circuit. Do NOT remove GFCI protection! You can determine whether they are GFCIs with a $10 device from a home center that would be good to have around anyway. It might also be possible to add a GFCI outlet that would do the same job as the breaker for GFCI protection and use of a regular breaker, but I agree with others that this is lkely an arc-fault breaker that is falsely tripping. Either way, I am not a fan of gerry-rigging by bypassing safety devices originally installed. This is likely solvable while retaining the protection these devices add because they are likely just operating out of spec - it's just a little bit more effort and expense to do it.
Re: the other comments in this thread on panels - We had an odd siuation when we bought this house, in that we had service split into two 200 amp panels. The left panel (not a sub) had only the heat pump on it, with three separate breakers for compressor, air handler and backup strips, and a lot of empty spaces, but NO main breaker! And monitoring was apparently done with CTs. The only thing anyone could figure out was that it was somehow designed to work with special pricing for heating all electric homes years ago (late 70's house), a practice that no longer applies here. Neither we nor our electrician had ever seen anything like it. And the big problem was that the right panel was so overloaded with circuits that it was difficult to get the cover back on because of the rat's nest of wires in it. We ended up replacing the heat pump panel (adding a main breaker, which made everyone including the inspector feel much better), and transferring several circuits that would not be needed in a power outage to that panel, freeing up space and resolving the rat's nest in the other panel. We then added a UL-approved manual transfer switch to a generator that allowed us to use most circuits in the house during an outage (not the heat pump, range, dryer or ovens, but but most others), along with whole house suppressors on each panel. All in all a decent sized job but the result was a much safer, more effective outcome. It's amazing what some builders do and get by with originally...
Also, these MAY be GFCI breakers, which take the place of a GFCI outlet as first outlet in a circuit. Do NOT remove GFCI protection! You can determine whether they are GFCIs with a $10 device from a home center that would be good to have around anyway. It might also be possible to add a GFCI outlet that would do the same job as the breaker for GFCI protection and use of a regular breaker, but I agree with others that this is lkely an arc-fault breaker that is falsely tripping. Either way, I am not a fan of gerry-rigging by bypassing safety devices originally installed. This is likely solvable while retaining the protection these devices add because they are likely just operating out of spec - it's just a little bit more effort and expense to do it.
Re: the other comments in this thread on panels - We had an odd siuation when we bought this house, in that we had service split into two 200 amp panels. The left panel (not a sub) had only the heat pump on it, with three separate breakers for compressor, air handler and backup strips, and a lot of empty spaces, but NO main breaker! And monitoring was apparently done with CTs. The only thing anyone could figure out was that it was somehow designed to work with special pricing for heating all electric homes years ago (late 70's house), a practice that no longer applies here. Neither we nor our electrician had ever seen anything like it. And the big problem was that the right panel was so overloaded with circuits that it was difficult to get the cover back on because of the rat's nest of wires in it. We ended up replacing the heat pump panel (adding a main breaker, which made everyone including the inspector feel much better), and transferring several circuits that would not be needed in a power outage to that panel, freeing up space and resolving the rat's nest in the other panel. We then added a UL-approved manual transfer switch to a generator that allowed us to use most circuits in the house during an outage (not the heat pump, range, dryer or ovens, but but most others), along with whole house suppressors on each panel. All in all a decent sized job but the result was a much safer, more effective outcome. It's amazing what some builders do and get by with originally...
wuench
Senior Member
gatchel said:
The sticker on my load center is on the interior of the box on the side, the cover must be removed to see it. The cover is a separate part# from the load center so the cover doesn't have the info in my case. If it doesn't clearly spell it out number of circuits > number of slots, it doesn't support double breakers. Here is a good link on what to look for...
You could just replace the ARC fault breakers with a normal breaker of the same size, and then replace the outlets on that circuit with ARC fault outlets.
Also, if you are still inside the return period from SH, maybe consider ZWave instead of Insteon... While I have never tried ZWave, I have a lot of issues with Insteon reliability, so this may just be the beginning of your problems... Consider the cost of replacing breakers/outlets against just replacing the Insteon switches.
Work2Play said:
Here's a nice reference for panel load calulations from Siemes. It's rather simplistic, but it consolodates many sections of NEC code into a easy to follow calculation. Page 58 gives example calucations for a 2000 sq foot home (with NEC references): http://www.industry.usa.siemens.com/topics/us/en/archivedsites/quickstep/Documents/load_centers.pdf
Simply comparing the sq footage of two homes does not give a good indication of the electrical load. If your neighbor has an electric range, water heater, and dryer where you have gas, he could easilly be consuming more power.
Total general loads (bedrooms, fam room, etc) that are above 3000 VA are added at 35% of the load. Since your neighbor requires the same major electrical loads that you have, your additional square footage is adding mostly general loads that contribute only 35% to the calculated load of the panel.
These loads absolutely eat of space, but don't necessarily increase the size of the main breakers.
If you have questions on a specific code reference, I can provide sections up to the 2005 version.
42etus
Active Member
FWIW to the OP. I had the same problem with one arc fault breaker in new construction. I would turn a Switchlink on and the AFCI breaker on that circuit would trip. The problem turned out to be that the electrician that did the rough in wiring ( me ) had inadvertently connected the neutral wires from two different circuits together in one switch location. Evidently the AFCI breakers don't like that. As soon as I separated the neutrals, the problem was resolved.
tmbrown97
Senior Member
Thanks guys - I'll try and take a look today; interesting reading to say the least. When I reference my house vs. my neighbor, these are tract homes so things are pretty much the same; if I have gas water heater, so does he; my stove might be wider (36" vs. 30") but will be the same brand/series built-in; 4 ton HVAC vs. 5 ton, but same style/brand... that's how these houses are built... all at the same time, and the crews just finish one house then walk next door and start that one. Things like Laundry room are plumbed for gas or electric dryer - so whatever I happen to install...
Tech note from Lutron on AFCI's tripping with over 1000W of dimmable loads connected. They offer a number of recommendations for preventing nuisance trips: http://www.lutron.com/TechnicalDocumentLibrary/AFCI_FAQ.pdf
The technote appears to written with incanscent lamps in mind (they refer to inrush current during warm up). Dimmable LED's an CFL's may cause issues at a much lower installed wattage due to their repetitive inrush characteristic.
I'm not convinced that the breakers in question are AFCI. Depending on the year of construction, it seems like there would be more than just two of them.
I have seen Insteon/X10 trip GFCI's when a 3 prong device with a common mode fiter is plugged in. The capactior in a common mode filter will look like a low impeadance at Insteon/X10 frequencies and shunt current to ground. The GFCI can see this as a current imbalance between the hot and neutral causing a trip.
The above does not happen very often because:
1) Not many people use a device with a common mode filter on GFCI circuits (kitchen, baths, garage, basement).
2) The ratio of the differential to common mode capacitance in most filters will shunt the lions share of the current to neutral and pull down the insteon signal voltage (.1uF). This doesn't leave enough voltage/current for the much smaller common mode cap to cause and imbalance.
With the above said, I had an old Laserjet printer that would trip the basement GFCI until I filtered it.
The technote appears to written with incanscent lamps in mind (they refer to inrush current during warm up). Dimmable LED's an CFL's may cause issues at a much lower installed wattage due to their repetitive inrush characteristic.
I'm not convinced that the breakers in question are AFCI. Depending on the year of construction, it seems like there would be more than just two of them.
I have seen Insteon/X10 trip GFCI's when a 3 prong device with a common mode fiter is plugged in. The capactior in a common mode filter will look like a low impeadance at Insteon/X10 frequencies and shunt current to ground. The GFCI can see this as a current imbalance between the hot and neutral causing a trip.
The above does not happen very often because:
1) Not many people use a device with a common mode filter on GFCI circuits (kitchen, baths, garage, basement).
2) The ratio of the differential to common mode capacitance in most filters will shunt the lions share of the current to neutral and pull down the insteon signal voltage (.1uF). This doesn't leave enough voltage/current for the much smaller common mode cap to cause and imbalance.
With the above said, I had an old Laserjet printer that would trip the basement GFCI until I filtered it.
Indy Mike,
Is this the applications note you where talking about?
http://www.lutron.com/TechnicalDocumentLibrary/AFCI_FAQ.pdf
Is this the applications note you where talking about?
http://www.lutron.com/TechnicalDocumentLibrary/AFCI_FAQ.pdf
