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Ed Pawlowski[_3_] Ed Pawlowski[_3_] is offline
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Default GFCI Outlet in Garage Keeps Tripping

On 6/18/2019 10:14 PM, Ryanallen11 wrote:
So I have a GFCI outlet in my garage that keeps tripping. It first
happened 2
days ago. When I hit the reset button, everything turned back on and worked
fine for a while. It tripped again yesterday, and same thing. I reset it
and
everything was good. Today when I first noticed it tripped, I reset it
and it
stayed on for about 5 minutes before it tripped again. Now every time I
reset
it, it lasts for less than a minute before tripping again. During the 30
minutes or so that I was just playing with it, there was about a minute
where
hitting the reset button would not do anything and it would just
immediately
pop back out but then went back to staying on for ~ 30 seconds before
tripping
again. Any clue on what could be causing this? The outlet is on a wall
inside my garage but the other side of the wall is the
exterior of the house. There are a few other normal(no reset button)
outlets
in the garage that are connected to this GFCI as one of them had a
refrigerator plugged in it and this and anything else plugged into any
of them
will not work when the main GFCI is tripped. Also, the lights in one
room of
my basement are also connected to it as well. I disconnected the fridge
and plugged it into an extension cord that I then
plugged into a different outlet inside the house and it worked no
problem so I
know it's not the fridge. There are also no circuit breakers that are
popped
and I still turned all of them off and back on again and the problem still
persists. We have had a lot of rain the last few days and it now is
worse than
the last 2 days which coincides with the fact that today, we probably
had the
most rain. Excuse me for my lack of electrical knowledge but I'm not
sure if that circuit
is connected anywhere else, or if it has a connection to an outdoor outlet.
All I know is that when it is tripped, one single room of my basement
lights
won't work and all the outlets in the garage won't work however the
lights in
the garage are still on and it seems like all other outlets and lights
in the
house are still working fine even when it's tripped. Could water be
getting in
somehow since it is on the interior side of a wall that also faces the
exterior of the house or could it just be a coincidence that it happened
during rainy days and there is something else wrong with the GFCI? Any
help is
much appreciated!


Could be moisture. Rain, condensation. Could be any one of the plugs
causing it. Check the grounds for good contact.

Refrigerators should not be on a GFCI for the reason you are
experiencing. Would suck to have it trip while you are on vacation.