Oren
Mon, 05 Sep 2016
19:49:19 GMT in alt.home.repair, wrote:

On Mon, 5 Sep 2016 19:31:29 -0000 (UTC), Diesel
wrote:

It's been a while since I installed any GFCIs and I don't
remember the date on my last code book but you mean a newer type
GFCI needs no ground wire? o_O

Umm. Unless you know something about GFCI that I don't, it's never
needed a ground wire. From what I understand, the GFCI is watching
the voltage from hot to neutral and if they become imbalanced, it
trips.

Look up the Leviton GFCI Outlet. Is has a green screw for the
ground wire. Butterbean.

Yes, it has a place to connect ground, so that it can provide a
ground to anything plugged into it as well as attached on the load
side of it (as long as you ground them too). It doesn't use ground to
do it's job and try to prevent you from getting a potentially nasty
shock, though. It's monitoring the hot and neutral wires coming into
it.

If it sees any difference in current between the two, it'll trip.
Faster than a breaker normally can. And under conditions where the
breaker might not trip. IE: you're the source to ground, but, you
aren't causing enough of a drain to overload the breaker running the
circuit and you aren't causing a short circuit condition, either. So,
if you can't get free, you're getting cooked.

GFCI won't allow that to happen. It sees the current going back to
neutral isn't matching what's coming in on the hot line. A leak has
been detected. Cut power, as in yesterday. Saved your ass. You
probably didn't even get a tingle, it responds that fast.

Sadly, the GFCI is a little on the sensitive side and can result in
unwanted tripping when certain devices try to power up plugged into
one. It's not due to a surge on startup of the device.. It's because
the device is leaking a little more current than the GFCI is okay
with. This leak may still be harmless to you, but, the GFCI isn't
okay with it.

If this happens, and the device works fine on other properly wired
outlets, you can try plugging a surge (protector) surpressor into the
gfci and your device (like a treadmill) into the surge surpressor.
This may be enough to stop it. If that doesn't work, an isolation
transformer will do the trick.

Also! I've noticed that some surge surpressors will also trip a GFCI
receptacle. I suspect it's because a small amount of current is
leaking due to worn/cheap MOVs. If yours is, either replace it or try
to find a GFCI outlet that you can still make use of that doesn't
trip when you try to use it. Tolerance varies, slightly.



--
MID:
Hmmm. I most certainly don't understand how I can access a copy of a
zip file but then not be able to unzip it so I can watch it. That
seems VERY clever!
http://al.howardknight.net/msgid.cgi?ID=145716711400