In (Klaus Vestergaard
Kragelund):
"Mark Jones" 127.0.0.1 wrote in message
...
In (Michael A. Terrell):
Gary Tait wrote:

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 02:47:00 -0600, wrote:

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 15:44:40 -0700, Jim Thompson
wrote:

Went outside to add another electrical circuit at the BBQ and
discovered that all of my nice wire-tagging had faded to
non-readable.

So I couldn't figure out which common went with which hot.

Then it dawned on me to simply trip the GFCIs which releases *both*
hots and commons so a simple ohm-meter check would do the trick.

NOT! Both GFCIs wouldn't trip when I pressed the test buttons :-(

Went to Radio Shack and bought a Receptacle/GFCI tester for $5.99.

At the same time I noticed a gadget to locate breakers... bought it
also ($29.95).

Went home and tested the GFCIs... both have failed :-( Tester was
verified on some indoor GFCIs... it would trip them.

Both bad units are outdoors, so maybe it was the heat (they both
face the western sun... it gets over 120°F here :-). Any other
ideas about why they fail?

The breaker locator is neat... plug a sender unit into an outlet,
then scan the breakers... works like a champ.

...Jim Thompson


That is why the electric company should install a GFCI up on the
pole at the transformer. That way, everyone and everything is
protected in the whole neighborhood.

It would be inconvenient to wait for the Poco to reset it. The best
thing would be a whole house GFCI, as is oftern used in most of the
rest of the world.

So something minor happens, and all the lights go off? THIS IS A
VERY STUPID IDEA. The code here requires separate lighting and
receptacle circuits so the room doesn't go dark if you trip a
breaker. Also, most areas of a home do not need GFCI protection. Wet
areas, areas with bare concrete floors, or outdoors make sense. Some
circuits it is illegal to use a GFCI breaker, like a refrigerator, or
a freezer.


Really. If we have to ground-fault an entire house (because the
occupants are too stupid and keep getting electrocuted to death) then
maybe they should just go live in a hut somewhere in Afghanistan,
where there is little risk of electrocution?


I believe most european contries have a GFI, certainly we have them in
Denmark where I live. I'm very happy we have those installed in the main
power inlet because it is a lifesafer. Many houses fail to have correct
or even installed ground/earth protection at all (before 1970 or
thereabouts it was not illegal to run appliances without earting). In
these cases the GFI serves a great purpose and which is why it was
installed in the first place

I have only experience lightning strikes mistakenly triggering the GFI
two/three times over 30 years, so I see no reason to apply them only to
certain areas in the house. The only times I have been bothered by the
GFI is when I'm doing experiements in my lab, and in these cases I have
been surprised sometimes because I did something stupid (like
connecting the scope to the phone wire, tripping the GFI because the
phoneline neutral is grounded also)

Cheers

Klaus

Interesting. All of the wiring in my house when it was built in the 60's
was all non-grounded. Uses the round branch fuses... Since then a lot of the
wiring has been upgraded, but even now some outlets are not grounded
properly, and there is no GFCI's in any room. In the garage, the outlets are
grounded to a metal rod in the ground, which barely passes as a ground,
especially when cutting steel with a 380v cutter...

A whole-house GFCI would be a nightmare for my residence. Some drills and
other power tools out in the garage are the old metal ones, which do leak
some parasitic conductance. I'm sure if my whole house was GFCI'd, I'd have
a remote-reset for it....