...waters recede ambient heat dries the connection, corrosion can set in. A slight amount of impedance at the connection interface coupled with electrical current flow always results in I squared R heat rise, which sets the stage for more corrosion.

Whether the full effects surface hours, days or years later the end result will be somewhere between an annoying callback for the electrician and catastrophic loss of property or life.

Arc fault circuit interrupters address this hazard by recognizing the unique sputtery signature of a series connection with too much impedance or a parallel fault with too little impedance, but only after these defects have caused an outage. Other impedance issues can exist unseen by AFCI and GFCI equipment -- an example is a poor connection within an equipment grounding conductor.

Moreover, corrosion is only one of several factors in this equation. Other problems include terminations not fully torqued or overtorqued to failure, wirenuts that disengage when wiring is squeezed back into an undersized enclosure, raceway serving as equipment grounding conductor that separates due to structural problems of the building or concrete cracking and separating. In other words, the list is...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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