Can't add much to what the pro's have already said.............except to say.......similar event happened at a house around corner from where our first home was. Same type of situation......some remodel work was down........and shortly after that the house burned to the ground.

The cause they came up with was a nail driven into a wall hit a wire.........and the short it created made the nail hot enough it ignited the pine board it was driven into. Apparently the breaker didn't see that level of short as a problem........just a load on the line. If a dimmer switch was melted, same condition may still exist. If it does, I'd want to be finding it at whatever the cost.

My old Electrical Code instructor had a problem with an arc fault breaker constantly tripping in the garage he just built. He went over and above with the arc faults, he doesn’t need them in a detached garage.
Tried a new one, same thing.. He pulled some sheets off and found a bunch of long staples from the crew that sheeted the outside, one bit through his 14/2 circuit. Guess they used up the long staples that were in the gun before switching to shorter ones.
Some folks switch to a normal breaker when the arc faults keep tripping, they’ll hold if there’s not enough of a fault……until it burns itself clear and nothing works, or the fire department shows up.
Sometimes when the breaker trips, it’s not weak or faulty, it’s actually doing its job……lol

Seen guys that will replace a breaker instead of hunting the cause of breaker tripping.

Might do better to just abandon the old wire and run new.

I got to do some trouble shooting today. I pulled the dimmer switch and put in a regular toggle switch. There are (3) sets of wires coming from above. I hooked up each set of wires individually to the toggle switch. Sets A and B did nothing. Set C tripped the breaker as soon as the switch was toggled.




I tried pulling the cans. I could only get the outside cover pulled. I found the junction box inside. It's all so tight.



It's looking like running a new wire is going to be easiest, but i doubt thats going to be very easy. Tomorrow I plan to get in the small attic area and see what it looks like from above. Luckily I've got an uncle who understands wiring and wants to help. I saw him today at a family get together. I'm going to call the electric company Monday and express my disappointments with their performance.

Built a house in 85 that had can lights in kitchen and dinning areas. This was before LED bulbs. The dimmer switch got very hot. Had to change to a dimmer that was rated for more amps. Seem to remember the bulbs drew 175 watts each.

Probably would not have been a problem with today’s LED bulbs.

This is getting interesting to me. Keep us updated HoosierTrapper.

First house we lived in was a cheap spec house starter home. We lived there 10 years and in that time had problems with about every building component there was......foundation, drainage, framing, furnace, plumbing and wiring. A real money pit. Fellow that built that house was in construction trades but as a house painter.....not a contractor. We later found out he may have done a lot of the work himself, including the wiring, so real droppings show. Eventually, he went bankrupt over all of it, but by then the damage had been done. BTW, back then, no building inspections in the county, so while codes existed, no enforcement, so codes not followed. It was buyer beware.

But as for the wiring, at one point, a breaker kept tripping in the basement.......back then I was ignorant about most of that stuff, but finally got concerned about the tripping out, so started looking into it. At that time, code or "standard" to be followed would have been no more than 8 outlets or fixtures on a 15 amp circuit wired with 14-2 wire. On the breaker that kept flipping, in an effort to find and diagnose the problem........I started looking.........and eventually found 16 outlets and fixtures on that one circuit. It looked like they had installed too small of a service panel and that being an all electric home, ran out of room, so just made one big run of it at the end. Fix was to add a duel pole breaker in that slot and split that circuit into two.

But lesson learned was that as long as code is followed, things generally work well with no problems. It is when you deviate that the wheels come off. Things like installing 20 amp breakers and outlets on 14-2 wire, which you can physically do. Or one of the worst I see guys doing is with RV hookups using adapter plugs. Then when the breakers trip, going to bigger breakers. General fault is pushing too many amps thru too small wire. So when breakers are tripping or switches melting.........that is the system screaming at you something is wrong and you need to stop.

Have come to realize that a lot of this stuff is not hard to do if you know how..........but same could be said for open heart surgery.

When you replaced , the dimmer switch , with the old rocker switch , did you test to see that you have power coming from the panel , to the switch. . Should be 125 volts. Looks like you have a wire going , to each side to feed your pot lights . The third wire in your diagram , must go to feed other things on the circuit, probably wall receptecles. . See if you have power to all the receptecles. also unplug any lamps , and other things in plugs. Have seen lamps shorted in their sockets, cause problems. You have now eliminated a problem , at your panel , the switch , and the recepecles.. Now You likely do know that , your problem , is in the wiring to the pot lights . Now open the black wires to the pots, likely the 14-2 wire. Likely problem is just in one or other. Could be a shorted out socket in a pot light. I have found many problems, by smelling , for a burned bakelite smell.. Have you had a lightning storm, about the time it happened. Could be lightening damage. and an insurance claim? Good Luck finding it. old 243

I poked around the attic this morning. Couldnt really see too much. I think I could probably feed a new pine down to the first set of cans from above, and then maybe fish it thru to the other set behind the wood paneling.

If a screw hit them wires I will eat my hat.

I’m with cotton on this one , I don’t see how it would be possible .

Is there another row of cans you can see in the picture ? If not go and pull the outlet out they was using and check and see if the person that originally wired the house used the stabs on the outlet instead of wrapping the wire around the screw .

Disregard my comment about the outlet. I checked this morning and that outlet is on a different breaker. I was mistaken.

Yes, there are other cans. But they are on a different breaker. In the pic below you can see the top lights work, the lower side lights do not. They are on different dimmer switch on a different breaker.