angelman
New User
- Location
- Los Angeles
- Occupation
- Lighting designer
I have a brand new Navien tankless water heater on the outside of the house, this is plugged into an Leviton GFCI outlet enclosed in a weatherproof box. The box is connected to a new Siemens sub panel with a 20amp breaker. The only other item on the same circuit is a GFCI outlet in a nearby bathroom. All of the wiring is brand new and allegedly done to code. The 20amp breaker is a standard non AFCI breaker.
We have suffered the dreaded AFCI nuisance tripping the moment the wiring was done. THe general contractor that performed all the work is reluctant/refusing to do any work to diagnose the situation so I have had to do diagnostics myself.
Working with Siemens technical support I have narrowed the issue to the GFCI on the outside of the house. I can plug the water heater into any outlet in the house on any circuit (even an AFCI protected circuit) and immediately the nuisance tripping stops. I can even plug the water heater into the GFCI in the bathroom which is on the same circuit as the exterior GFCI. This points to an issue with the outside GFCI outlet. I tested it for and ground problems and found none, using both a multimeter and an outlet probe.
Siemens suggest the issue is related to noise generated by the water heater and suggest I add a power conditioner to the GFCI outlet.
The really curious part of this whole issue is that not only did the AFCI tripping get resolved but the performance of the water heater immediately improved! WHen the heater was first installed it took maybe 3 minutes to get hot water. Plugging the heater into a different outlet the time to get hot water went down to a matter of seconds. This is a gas powered tankless heater!
Given the unhelpful nature of the general contractor I want to be able to clearly point to what the fault is and then they have no excuse not to fix it under their warranty.
Any thoughts or insight on this?
We have suffered the dreaded AFCI nuisance tripping the moment the wiring was done. THe general contractor that performed all the work is reluctant/refusing to do any work to diagnose the situation so I have had to do diagnostics myself.
Working with Siemens technical support I have narrowed the issue to the GFCI on the outside of the house. I can plug the water heater into any outlet in the house on any circuit (even an AFCI protected circuit) and immediately the nuisance tripping stops. I can even plug the water heater into the GFCI in the bathroom which is on the same circuit as the exterior GFCI. This points to an issue with the outside GFCI outlet. I tested it for and ground problems and found none, using both a multimeter and an outlet probe.
Siemens suggest the issue is related to noise generated by the water heater and suggest I add a power conditioner to the GFCI outlet.
The really curious part of this whole issue is that not only did the AFCI tripping get resolved but the performance of the water heater immediately improved! WHen the heater was first installed it took maybe 3 minutes to get hot water. Plugging the heater into a different outlet the time to get hot water went down to a matter of seconds. This is a gas powered tankless heater!
Given the unhelpful nature of the general contractor I want to be able to clearly point to what the fault is and then they have no excuse not to fix it under their warranty.
Any thoughts or insight on this?
