[Bedivere]

That doesn't sound like the best idea to me. The point of an AFCI breaker is to protect the entire circuit from point of origin in the panel the utilization device. An AFCI receptacle wouldn't protect the wiring from panel to said receptacle and it would do exactly nothing to protect against arcing in a lighting-only circuit. A loose connection inside a j-box or permanently installed fixture would still be able to arc and burn your house down.

[kbatku]

AFCI's required on all new residential circuits and circuits extended over six feet, except for the garage, outside receps and bathrooms. There are AFCI's made for FPE (Stablock) but as yet nothing for Zinsco, everything else should retrofit unless you have something really funky (Wadsworth etc...). If you have a Zinsco or FPE panel, you should change it anyway because they are obsolete and dangerous, FPE especially so. Zinsco can still work OK, they mostly have a problem with burned bussing because someone improperly installed the breakers. If the customer doesn't want to spring for a service upgrade, install a small subpanel or mount a box next to the panel and put the AFCI receps in there and feed the new circuits from them. The nuisance tripping has improved, but one of the main offenders are vacuum cleaners. I'm thinking they need to make a line of "AFCI approved" appliances - nothing worse than not being able to use a brand new appliance. Try explaining THAT to the homeowner. The nice thing is they are now making dual function AFCI's that do GFI as well, and they are only a buck or two extra (Cutler Hammer, Square D, ITE maybe more). So you can leave out the GFI's on trim and rely on the breaker - a much nicer looking install. And to use an AFCI outlet, you have to run MC or pipe to the first outlet in the circuit - usually a breaker will be cheaper and easier.

[AR]

On some larger power lines they've installed circular little metal spring looking things. Anyone know what those are about?

[Bedivere]

[Chico]