Are safety concerns alleviated here by GFCI breakers? In what cases could this appliance pull more amps than it was designed for? I know it's not required for circuits outside kitchen and bathroom, but I was thinking about just replacing all the breakers with combined GFCI/AFCI ones (especially given that my circuits are so old that there's no ground on them, in which case code I believe mandates that the outlets are GFCI-protected and labeled as "no ground").
So the risk would be reduced. Since if the failure causes a electricity to travel anywhere other than the neutral it will cause the gfci to trip. A scenario where a device would pull more power would be a short developing in a heating element reducing its resistance. So it would just pull more power but all of the power is still going to the neutral and wouldn't trip the GFCI.
Also with replacing all your breakers it can increase safety. But first the breakers are not cheap. Second it can lead to a lot of nuisance trips, albeit that is better than it used to be with modern breakers.
Yeah your AFCI in theory is supposed to help reduce fire risk. Since failures like that cause arcing. But yeah it will be around $60-$80 per breaker, but there is definitely cheaper than ripping open walls to re-run wires.
GFCI is not a magic “make everything perfectly safe” - you could electrocute yourself to very dead without tripping a GFCI if all the power went down the main wires and none went to ground.
