Thread: bedroom fire

I had some friends experience a serious bedroom fire, the house built in the 70,s with 15 amp outlets , the hi tech boy had all the fun stuff going, tv-computer, printer lights, hi-fi, other games boards paper shreader and who all knows what, my question is if the bedroom had a arc fault circuit breaker installed at service panel , would that have possible prevented the fire. this is a pretty normal occurance any more with all the techie kids blasting away in their bedrooms.

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The purpose of AFCI is to catch electrical arcs and kill the power. If the cause of the fire was electrical, then it may have killed the power before the house caught fire, but nothing is a hundred percent.

With all that stuff going it sounds equally likely that it was an overloaded breaker that didn't trip.... Fed Pacific Panel by chance?

Originally Posted by daniel nantell

my question is if the bedroom had a arc fault circuit breaker installed at service panel , would that have possible prevented the fire.

"would that have possible prevented the fire"

Yes.

It's been my experience that most bedroom fires are caused by externsion cords running under carpets and in traffic patterns. And true, an overloaded breaker is supposed to "break" the electrical connection (that's why they call it breakers), but we also know that many fail to do so. FPE Stab-Loks come to mind!

Daniel, see if you can find out what type of panel was protecting that circuit and keep us posted as to what the investigators/insurance company finds out. An arc Fault feature of the breaker would not have protected an overload, just arc (spark) type ignition from whatever - loose connections, foreign objects falling on exposed plug terminals etc. The breaker should have done it's job if it was an overload, but we all know some are more reliable than others.

And, if it was caused by overloaded / overheated cords, the breaker would likely not have been overloaded, but the resulting fire from the cords 'may' have caused an AFCI to trip, thereby 'possibly' allowing the fire to go out before it really started.

'Possibly', maybe not.