mino
Member
- Joined
- May 5, 2016
- Messages
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You are better off/in addition to above running anything permanently powered - where you know the amperage requirement - from a dedicated breaker/circuit which has a lower tiping current.4nthony said:
What can happen is that a double-insulated non-grounded appliance /like I assume here/ will catch fire *inside* itself without touching anything grounded. In that case the GFCI will not trigger and a "normal" overload breaker may not get to its flipping point either - say a 15A breaker B type will flip no sooner than at 45A, which is enough for some proper welding machine .. The new AFCI breakers *might* but there also the higher allowable current, the less sensitive they necessarily are.
If you have a proper circuit for permanent-use low-load devices, say at 10A B type tops, the basic overload breaker is pretty likely to catch anything like this.
We use this approach lately for our new LED lightning as the shop is dusty and the lights being plastic and high up/badly reachable ..
We did not want to take any chances, and since the whole setup was only 9*13W, so 121W total, we actually put a 2A@230V B type breaker for that circuit to make sure if anything goes funky the breaker gets as much a chance to catch it as possible. This despite the wiring setup requiring only a "max 10A" breaker per the standards.
Having a distinction between "tools used in attendance" and "devices turned on all the time". For those "all the time" the fire hazard from arcing, etc. is way, way bigger than with those used only with people presence who can remediate the problem before it gets truly bad. Having AFCI everywhere is good, but where it really matters is for permanently powered devices.
Same with GFCI, that, on the other hand, you want on everything people can touch .. in addition to the permanently powered stuff.
