Circuit suddenly went bad

[vette-kid]

Moved into a new house about a month ago. First week in I replaced a few outlets in the master with newer outlets that have USB in them. Fast forward to today, I come home to a dead circuit. It will stay for about 10 seconds and then trip. Nothing on, nothing plugged in.

Now the new outlets seem an obvious culprit, by why all of a sudden. Everything has worked great for the last 3 weeks. We did also have a good storm today, but not the first since moving.

Assuming it's not the new circuit, what kind of damage would I be looking for? What would cause a circuit to just quit like that after seeming to work just fine?

I have not had a chance to look at anything since wife is in the hospital and I'm home with 2 little ones.

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[Dagny]

Is there an afci or gfci breaker installed?

 

[Dagny]

Is there an afci or gfci installed?

 

[jhelrey]

You might have loose wiring or something is getting warm and then tripping.

 

[vette-kid]

Is there an afci or gfci installed?

Do not believe there is a GFCI. There is an outdoor fixture, I'll have to check and see if the outdoor outlet is on that too.

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[retDAC]

Make sure the breaker itself is okay. Switch it into another circuit if necessary to test unless you can put a load elsewhere on the circuit.

 

[vette-kid]

Is there an afci or gfci installed?

It is an AFCI

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[wyliesdiesels]

Moved into a new house about a month ago. First week in I replaced a few outlets in the master with newer outlets that have USB in them. Fast forward to today, I come home to a dead circuit. It will stay for about 10 seconds and then trip. Nothing on, nothing plugged in.

Now the new outlets seem an obvious culprit, by why all of a sudden. Everything has worked great for the last 3 weeks. We did also have a good storm today, but not the first since moving.

Assuming it's not the new circuit, what kind of damage would I be looking for? What would cause a circuit to just quit like that after seeming to work just fine?

I have not had a chance to look at anything since wife is in the hospital and I'm home with 2 little ones.

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Im confused. You said you put some new outlets in but then mentioned a new circuit. Did you also install a new circuit?

You might have loose wiring or something is getting warm and then tripping.

A breaker will not trip just because something is warm.

It is an AFCI

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I have not heard of this but i wouldnt be surprised if the USB outlets might be causing an issue that the AFCI is seeing as an arc.

Try removing the new outlets and see if the nuisance tripping stops. Also, check the wiring in the junction boxes to make sure you dont have a hot wire touching neutral or ground.

 

[75gmck25]

I had a similar problem after changing out some receptacles, and it turned out that I had a broken wire in one of the white leads.

My white wires were twisted together in a wire nut and one probably broke partially when first installed, but then stayed in enough contact to keep working. When I installed the new receptacle I disturbed the wiring and it created more of a break in the bad wire. Everything showed normal with a standard plug in receptacle tester, but the GFCI tripped as soon as I plugged in any actual load.

Bruce

 

[tyme2par4]

I had an AFCI circuit breaker go bad in my previous house. It would just randomly trip every now and then, then after a few months, it would do the same as yours, just trip shortly after turning back on.
I checked all the wiring I could find on that circuit and didn't find anything wrong. I then replaced it with a new AFCI breaker and it stopped tripping.

 

[wyliesdiesels]

I had a similar problem after changing out some receptacles, and it turned out that I had a broken wire in one of the white leads.

My white wires were twisted together in a wire nut and one probably broke partially when first installed, but then stayed in enough contact to keep working. When I installed the new receptacle I disturbed the wiring and it created more of a break in the bad wire. Everything showed normal with a standard plug in receptacle tester, but the GFCI tripped as soon as I plugged in any actual load.

Bruce

A GFCI will not trip because of a broken wire. A GFCI only cares about load in and load out.

However an AFCI would trip because that broken wire can cause an arc.

 

[vette-kid]

After a dry day, the circuit holds fine. Convince me not to start in the wet locations.

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[rburke65]

Well the circuit didn't reset itself......

 

[vette-kid]

Well the circuit didn't reset itself......

Not sure what you getting at. My point was 24hrs after a hard rain the circuit holds after I reset it. I'm less concerned for faulty wiring and more concerned that something outside is getting wet.

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[b-boy]

Outdoor outlets are always a pain. If there's one on the circuit, that's probably the cuplrit.

I replace mine every 5-6 years. Water always manages to work it's way into the 'waterproof' casing.