Finishing my basement and had some help with our electrical install. I'm located in NJ btw, being that we installed new branched circuits (about 18 outlets and 16 LED lights), I had to use 3 breakers. For the new circuits, I used 3 AFCI (Eaton, CH, 15A, 120v) breakers, the pigtails connected to my neutral bar. However, each existing neutral is wired into each lug-hole with a ground, all other breakers in the box are standard, non AFCI.
When I test with it hooked up and turn the light switch on (with only 4 LEDs connected, for now), it trips right away. Which to me means a ground fault. Our home is from ~1997, all inspections passed then as the sticker on the panel indicates this. The panel actually looks really well done inside, no corrosion either. Note this is not a sub-panel, it's the one and only.
All is well if I leave the pigtail disconnected, the breaker stays on, but the test functions do not work and it will probably not pass an inspection, which I require for our permit. Any thoughts? The only thing I can think of is the following:
Get an AFCI Type CH breaker without the pigtail
Get a 2-Pole AFCI Type CH Breaker
Thanks!
Best Answer
You need to move the neutrals for those circuits onto the breaker neutral lugs
Many AFCI breakers, yours included, have a ground-fault trip in them, set at around 30mA, in order to catch arcs and other firestartingly hazardous leakages to ground. As a result, these AFCIs not only need their neutral pigtails connected to the neutral bus, they need the circuit neutrals connected to their neutral lugs, or else they will remind you of that requirement by instatripping on startup due to what appears to be an absolutely colossal ground fault (all the current going out through the breaker, yet none of it returning via the breaker neutral path). (This is also required if you ever want to install a GFCI or DFCI breaker into your panel, by the way.)