Knowing The Difference Between AFCI & GFCI

I'm Jeff Cox with Power Plus electrical service your favorite electrician and today we're going to talk about AFC eyes and GFCIs and what are they and what's the difference why do I need them and why are they important and all that stuff GFCIs have been around the longest for a long time and GFCI stands for a ground fault circuit interrupter so first question in my mind want to hear that is what in the world as a ground fault what does that mean the ground fault is when one of the conductors faults or shorts to ground so we were concerned about that fault or that short being through you and energy and power going through you and electrocuting or shocking you so the ground fault is there to prevent that from happening and how that happens is the ground fault is constantly monitoring how much power is going through the breaker or the receptacle and monitoring how much is on what we called the hot how much current is on the hot how much current is on the neutral it's looking for a variation in that current of approximately four thousands of an amp which is rushing it's very very very small so if it detects a variation in the current which is caused by one of those conductors faulting the ground it turns the circuit off and prevents you from getting shocked and ground faults are necessary and our code required only any receptacle it serves the kitchen countertop any receptacle is six feet of a sink like in your laundry room and your garage any receptacle in a bathroom any receptacle in a garage crawlspace unfinished basement outside receptacles those all required to be GFCI protected all right let's talk about arc fault circuit interrupter now this is also called combination arc fault circuit interrupters or just arc fault we're gonna call them arc faults just for ease of conversation there are two types of arcs that we're concerned about one is a planned arc when a switch is turned off and on there's a little arc inside that switch oh just a little spark and that's a planned spark and you turn your vacuum cleaner off and on that's a little spark involved there with the motor and the switch and those are playing sparks or planned arcs an unplanned arc is that there's a damaged wire perhaps damaged by when you hung a picture on the wall and you drove a nail through a wire through a wire when the mouse unfortunately got into you attic or your crawlspace and chewed into a wire when the electrician when they installed the the wire installed it incorrectly and it's shorted out these are unplanned arcs and the the arc fault circuit breaker has a in a sense a little microprocessor a computer inside it is analyzing the current flowing through that breaker and it's it's able to detect when there's an unplanned art and when you text that unplanned arc it realizes there's a danger and it turns the power off to the circuit in your home you probably have a fire extinguisher somewhere if you don't you should you should have smoke detectors in the house several of them these these devices are there for your safety to remove to help prevent fire same thing with the arc fault breakers they're for your safety to help prevent fire to help save your life we've talked about arc fault circuit interrupter we've talked about your own fault circuit interrupter afcis and GFC as they're both there for your safety the GFCI specifically to keep you from getting electrocuted the arc fault they're specifically to prevent a fire there both are there for your safety ultimately and they can coexist on the same circuit there's breakers that are called dual function breakers that function as an AFC I energy sei if you have if you have a situation where your your breaker trips and you reset it reset it by turning it all firmly and then back in the on position if you if you do that scenario all off and then back on and it doesn't want stay in the on position then you've got an arc fault could be a bad breaker it could be something in your circuit that is going wrong in your rate that condition is in your home need to call an electrician you

Channel: PowerPlus Electrical Services

Views: 46,083

Keywords: gfci, afci, what is afci, what is gfci, electric, electrician, asheville, north carolina

Id: 11dPMHd8pVA

Length: 4min 58sec (298 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2017