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by sbradford26 1020 days ago
So the risk would be reduced. Since if the failure causes a electricity to travel anywhere other than the neutral it will cause the gfci to trip. A scenario where a device would pull more power would be a short developing in a heating element reducing its resistance. So it would just pull more power but all of the power is still going to the neutral and wouldn't trip the GFCI.

Also with replacing all your breakers it can increase safety. But first the breakers are not cheap. Second it can lead to a lot of nuisance trips, albeit that is better than it used to be with modern breakers.

1 comments

Gotcha, so I guess it'll only protect from electrical hazard but fire hazard is still going to be there...

Breakers are probably going to be a bit cheaper and easier than opening all the walls to redo the circuits though...

Yeah your AFCI in theory is supposed to help reduce fire risk. Since failures like that cause arcing. But yeah it will be around $60-$80 per breaker, but there is definitely cheaper than ripping open walls to re-run wires.