treadmill trips breakers in other rooms

[ming liu]

Dear All,

I have a very strange situation. When my treadmill is on, breakers in other rooms will be tripped if any lights are turned on in those rooms. All these happens when the motor is on. The treadmill seems fine even when breakers in other rooms are tripped.

Thank you in advance.

Best.

Ming

 

[MikeMl]

Are the remote breakers the GFI or Arc Fault type?

 

[ming liu]

mine is GFCI.

Thank you.

Ming

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

A few things come to mind. Shared neutrals trip GFCI's. Sometimes this happens in a bathroom

GFCI's and AFCI's come in combination. A GFCI is a ground fault or it's tripped when the neutral and line currrent are unequal by about 7 mA.

An AFCI looks for a short characteristic or what can be perceived as arcing.

These are two different functions.

Your "Other rooms" may indeed be on the same circuit.

I would suspect that the treadmill doesn;t use a brushed motor.

1) See if the breaker is AFCI+GFCI. I'd almost want to determine the cause of the trip: 1) Overload, 2) AFCI and 3) GFCI, but I can't come up with an easy way to do so. A poor connection somewhere could easily be interpreted as an arc fault and a switch does ARC.

Does the other way trip it? Light on and then treadmill? Are we dealing with CFL lights?

Some AFCI breakers are known to be flaky. See; **broken link removed**

I have an Ideal Sure-test which MIGHT help, but only indirectly. Knowledge of the path and examining the path, so it's possible that a wall tracer and the Sure-test could help you find it.

One backstabbed outlet could be the cause of the issue.