brought next idea :
On Sun, 25 Jan 2015 12:03:30 -0500, FrozenNorth
wrote:

On 1/25/2015 11:53 AM, wrote:
On Sun, 25 Jan 2015 08:02:43 -0800 (PST), bob_villa
wrote:

On Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 10:35:28 PM UTC-6, Robert Green wrote:
"bob_villa" wrote in message
Isn't water conduction the point of GFCI?

Yes, but . . . I'd think the shock hazard is greatest when you're
dealing with things like metal sinks and actual contact with grounded wet
surfaces that improve conduction. With an icemaker you've got narrow
diameter plastic tubing and tap water, whose conductivity will vary with
the ion content of the water and very little chance of contact with
liquid water or the tubing that delivers it to the unit in normal use.

Thanks Mr. Green!

I do think this GFCI thing seems to be out of control.
It made sense to have GFCI on the small appliance circuits since most
of them do not use grounded plugs but the dishwasher and fridge have
grounded cases. The same is true of washers and dryers and the washing
machine receptacle is required to be GFCI now too.
Can the dryer be far behind? If not, why not?

Are there 220V gfci plugs or breakers even available?

They don't have a 240v GFCI receptacle (that I have seen) but they do
have 120/240 GFCI breakers. They are required on spas and pool pumps .

In Aus there are of course 230 volt GFCIs but new houses have one GFCI
in the main board. My house is 26 years old and has a 3 phase GFCI
covering everything including the AirCon.
The only time it has tripped in the 12 years I have been here there was
a device failure or a wet indoor GPO* that was outside in the rain. 3
times in all.

I fail to understand the comments about starting 2 devices (fridges
etc)
because GFCIs are not meant to care about load, just leakage to ground.

GPO = General Purpose Outlet. 3 pin socket.
By the rules ALL GPOs are 3 pin GROUNDED and have been the same design
since about 1935 although Ground was not required in some dry
situations untill about 1965?.

--
John G Sydney.

New fridges dont last like the old ones did.

my 1952 fridge gor replaced in 1996 because we were remodeling the kitchen.

my 1996 new fridge died in 2014, and was replaced, it just quit working.

true they use less electric/

Another thing, I rewired a kitchen totally, had the GFCIs in a easy to reach location, feeding outlets where they needed to be.....

theres zero reason to put them in the basement!

On 1/25/2015 8:08 PM, John G wrote:

I fail to understand the comments about starting 2 devices (fridges etc)
because GFCIs are not meant to care about load, just leakage to ground.


In a perfect world, you are right. I've seen them trip for unknown
reasons though.

On Sunday, January 25, 2015 at 8:08:31 PM UTC-5, John G wrote:
brought next idea :
On Sun, 25 Jan 2015 12:03:30 -0500, FrozenNorth
wrote:

On 1/25/2015 11:53 AM, wrote:
On Sun, 25 Jan 2015 08:02:43 -0800 (PST), bob_villa
wrote:

On Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 10:35:28 PM UTC-6, Robert Green wrote:
"bob_villa" wrote in message
Isn't water conduction the point of GFCI?

Yes, but . . . I'd think the shock hazard is greatest when you're
dealing with things like metal sinks and actual contact with grounded wet
surfaces that improve conduction. With an icemaker you've got narrow
diameter plastic tubing and tap water, whose conductivity will vary with
the ion content of the water and very little chance of contact with
liquid water or the tubing that delivers it to the unit in normal use.

Thanks Mr. Green!

I do think this GFCI thing seems to be out of control.
It made sense to have GFCI on the small appliance circuits since most
of them do not use grounded plugs but the dishwasher and fridge have
grounded cases. The same is true of washers and dryers and the washing
machine receptacle is required to be GFCI now too.
Can the dryer be far behind? If not, why not?

Are there 220V gfci plugs or breakers even available?

They don't have a 240v GFCI receptacle (that I have seen) but they do
have 120/240 GFCI breakers. They are required on spas and pool pumps .

In Aus there are of course 230 volt GFCIs but new houses have one GFCI
in the main board. My house is 26 years old and has a 3 phase GFCI
covering everything including the AirCon.
The only time it has tripped in the 12 years I have been here there was
a device failure or a wet indoor GPO* that was outside in the rain. 3
times in all.

I fail to understand the comments about starting 2 devices (fridges
etc)
because GFCIs are not meant to care about load, just leakage to ground.

GPO = General Purpose Outlet. 3 pin socket.
By the rules ALL GPOs are 3 pin GROUNDED and have been the same design
since about 1935 although Ground was not required in some dry
situations untill about 1965?.

--
John G Sydney.

The issue about two refrigerators starting at the same time
was with regard to them being on the same circuit and exceeding
the circuit trip capacity. I think there is general agreement
that for typical residential fridge/freezer in at least the last couple
of decades that isn't a problem.

It's interesting that you just have one main GFCI. Two immediate
things come to mind:

1 - Sounds good because then it protects all the circuits

2 - Sounds bad, because when some outside circuit trips from
something getting wet in the middle of the night, out goes all your
lights, heat, etc. And if the place is unoccupied and it's freezing,
you don't get back in time, some really bad things could happen.
Or similar with fridges in summer. With the main tripped/tripping,
it must be a bitch to isolate and identify the actual problem.
Especially if it's an intermittent thing that could take weeks
to investigate.

on 27/01/2015, trader_4 supposed :
On Sunday, January 25, 2015 at 8:08:31 PM UTC-5, John G wrote:
brought next idea :
On Sun, 25 Jan 2015 12:03:30 -0500, FrozenNorth
wrote:
On 1/25/2015 11:53 AM, wrote:
On Sun, 25 Jan 2015 08:02:43 -0800 (PST), bob_villa
wrote:

On Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 10:35:28 PM UTC-6, Robert Green wrote:
"bob_villa" wrote in message
Isn't water conduction the point of GFCI?

Yes, but . . . I'd think the shock hazard is greatest when you're
dealing with things like metal sinks and actual contact with grounded
wet surfaces that improve conduction. With an icemaker you've got
narrow diameter plastic tubing and tap water, whose conductivity will
vary with the ion content of the water and very little chance of
contact with liquid water or the tubing that delivers it to the unit
in normal use.

Thanks Mr. Green!

I do think this GFCI thing seems to be out of control.
It made sense to have GFCI on the small appliance circuits since most
of them do not use grounded plugs but the dishwasher and fridge have
grounded cases. The same is true of washers and dryers and the washing
machine receptacle is required to be GFCI now too.
Can the dryer be far behind? If not, why not?

Are there 220V gfci plugs or breakers even available?
They don't have a 240v GFCI receptacle (that I have seen) but they do
have 120/240 GFCI breakers. They are required on spas and pool pumps .

In Aus there are of course 230 volt GFCIs but new houses have one GFCI
in the main board. My house is 26 years old and has a 3 phase GFCI
covering everything including the AirCon.
The only time it has tripped in the 12 years I have been here there was
a device failure or a wet indoor GPO* that was outside in the rain. 3
times in all.

I fail to understand the comments about starting 2 devices (fridges
etc)
because GFCIs are not meant to care about load, just leakage to ground.

GPO = General Purpose Outlet. 3 pin socket.
By the rules ALL GPOs are 3 pin GROUNDED and have been the same design
since about 1935 although Ground was not required in some dry
situations untill about 1965?.

--
John G Sydney.

The issue about two refrigerators starting at the same time
was with regard to them being on the same circuit and exceeding
the circuit trip capacity. I think there is general agreement
that for typical residential fridge/freezer in at least the last couple
of decades that isn't a problem.
Only have one fridge but I think 2 fridges was brought into theGFCI
discussion. GFCIs do not trip on over load.

It's interesting that you just have one main GFCI. Two immediate
things come to mind:

1 - Sounds good because then it protects all the circuits.
Has worked well for me

2 - Sounds bad, because when some outside circuit trips from
something getting wet in the middle of the night, out goes all your
lights, heat, etc. And if the place is unoccupied and it's freezing,
you don't get back in time, some really bad things could happen.
All you say is true but this is SYDNEY Aus and there never has been a
frozen pipe since maybe the last Ice Age.
Or similar with fridges in summer. With the main tripped/tripping,
it must be a bitch to isolate and identify the actual problem.
Especially if it's an intermittent thing that could take weeks
to investigate.
I think our houses are smaller or have less circuits so the last trip I
had to locate (rain in an extension cord)I just pulled all the
individual breakers and then put thenm back till I got a trip, then
walked that cct till I found something unusual.
Turns out Daughter had used socket in rain water pump enclosure for a
tool then went home without replacing lid of enclosure. :-Z

--
John G Sydney.

laid this down on his screen :
On Tue, 27 Jan 2015 09:33:07 +1100, John G wrote:

Or similar with fridges in summer. With the main tripped/tripping,
it must be a bitch to isolate and identify the actual problem.
Especially if it's an intermittent thing that could take weeks
to investigate.


I think our houses are smaller or have less circuits so the last trip I
had to locate (rain in an extension cord)I just pulled all the
individual breakers and then put thenm back till I got a trip, then
walked that cct till I found something unusual.
Turns out Daughter had used socket in rain water pump enclosure for a
tool then went home without replacing lid of enclosure. :-Z

I guess that is why the whole house RCD never caught on here. Nobody
wants to lose the whole house just because someone left a Receptacle
cover open.
That could really be ugly if you were on "holiday" for a couple weeks.
Come home, the sump pump has failed and you have water everywhere, the
fridge stopped so you have a few hundred dollars worth of spoiled food
and your pool is green.

I prefer the protection to be as close to the failure as possible. It
makes it easier to figure out what went wrong and you isolate the
failure to a part of one circuit.

I cant argue with that, It is just the way it is and it has worked
quite well for us.
There is no sump pump, in fact there is no basement, there is no
furnace, the supermarket is only a mile away so the freezer is not
heavily loaded and as I said before it has never frozen over in
Sydney:-)
Seems life is a little simpler here but we are happy.

We do have to put up with all the bans on Incandescents etc.

--
John G Sydney.

On Sunday, January 25, 2015 at 8:58:21 PM UTC-5, bob haller wrote:
New fridges dont last like the old ones did.

my 1952 fridge gor replaced in 1996 because we were remodeling the kitchen.

my 1996 new fridge died in 2014, and was replaced, it just quit working.

true they use less electric/

Another thing, I rewired a kitchen totally, had the GFCIs in a easy to reach location, feeding outlets where they needed to be.....

theres zero reason to put them in the basement!

The reason they require them for the basement is likely similar to why
they are required outdoors. Typical basement floor is somewhat damp
concrete, also basements are where people then to have water problems,
use shop vacs to vacuum up water, etc. Using a power tool, vac, whatever
on a basement floor probably isn't too much different than outside.

wrote in message
...
On Sat, 24 Jan 2015 17:54:45 -0800 (PST), Ceaser
wrote:


A GFI with any device that pulls LRA at start up will have nuisance
trips almost without a doubt,especially if it gets foggy with the unit
outdoors.

Urban legend.
There are now thousands if not millions of big reefers in commercial
kitchens running on GFCI, not to mention all of those pool, spa and
sump pumps along with all of the power tools in garages and basements.

To be fair, he was referring not to reefers, but outside appliances used in
heavy fog. (-: I don't know of too many homeowners who keep their
refrigerators outside.

The number of nuisance trip complaints we've seen over time are likely a
case of early adopters reporting "settling in" problems. The same was true
of CFLs. If you were the first to buy CFLs, you got all sorts of junk.
None of the very expensive CFLs I bought early on performed well or lasted
long. That's changed as designs and manufacturing techniques improved.

I suspect GFCIs are the same. The 30 year old Slater GFCI's I bought when
they first became available were junk and nuisance tripped all the time.
The last trip I had from a recent vintage Leviton 20A unit was when my
gardener hedge-clipped his electrical extension cord. The refrigerator
hasn't tripped the GFCI in two years although the older one did. I suspect
the older refrigerator (30 years old!) DID have a ground fault of some kind,
but I never checked it out to see for sure.

--
Bobby G.

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 2 Feb 2015 10:45:36 -0500, "Robert Green"

stuff snipped

I suspect GFCIs are the same. The 30 year old Slater GFCI's I bought
when
they first became available were junk and nuisance tripped all the time.
The last trip I had from a recent vintage Leviton 20A unit was when my
gardener hedge-clipped his electrical extension cord. The refrigerator
hasn't tripped the GFCI in two years although the older one did. I
suspect
the older refrigerator (30 years old!) DID have a ground fault of some
kind,
but I never checked it out to see for sure.

I just threw that out there to dispel the rumor that motor loads trip
GFCIs. I agree refrigerators that trip GFCIs have a ground fault. I
have tested a few and they all do, usually internally in an old
compressor.

I meant to test the old compressor but when the refrigerator fails, there's
usually not a lot of time left for screwing around, particularly if the
vendor is going to take the old box away when they deliver the new one. The
old unit *did* trip the much newer Leviton GFCI as well as the 30+ year old
Slater GFCI so I assume there was current leak. The new GE unit on the new
Leviton GFCI has not yet nuisance tripped.

That is why the freon smells burnt when you cut them open.
I tested with a current probe on a scope, looking at the ground wire.
If someone is a non believer, plug in a 2 prong to 3 prong adapter and
tell them to touch the pigtail wire when you plug it in.

No thanks! (-: I often wonder why I wasn't electrocuted when I had a color
darkroom in the basement. Lots of water, lots of electricity and no GFCI's.
I did get some impressive shocks when the Uniroller motor agitator base's
internal wiring corroded, but I managed to repair it and make sure there
were no outward facing metal parts.

It's hard to believe how much color photography has changed since the
1970's. I went from rows and rows of bottles and tanks to support
Ektaprint, Ektachrome, Cibachrome and B&W film to just a tiny compact flash
card reader. Now I don't even need to pull the card out of the camera - it
connects to the PC via WiFi.

--
Bobby G.

On 2/7/2015 12:26 AM, Robert Green wrote:

It's hard to believe how much color photography has changed since the
1970's. I went from rows and rows of bottles and tanks to support
Ektaprint, Ektachrome, Cibachrome and B&W film to just a tiny compact flash
card reader. Now I don't even need to pull the card out of the camera - it
connects to the PC via WiFi.


Once in a great while I still miss doing some dodging and burning on the
enlarger, but it took me a half hour to get chemicals mixed, get the
trays in place, etc. just to get started.

My OM-2 has not been out of the case for years now.

On 2015-02-07, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

My OM-2 has not been out of the case for years now.

An old friend is a graphic artist and has informed me he's decided to
return to film photography. After using digital for several yrs, he's
become frustrated by his own lack of experience in this field. This
despite pro equipment and computer software and the knowledge of how
to use it. One reason is, he likes wide format photography (4x5).
I've not adapted well to digital, myself, so I understand his POV.

nb

"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in message
news
On 2/7/2015 12:26 AM, Robert Green wrote:

It's hard to believe how much color photography has changed since the
1970's. I went from rows and rows of bottles and tanks to support
Ektaprint, Ektachrome, Cibachrome and B&W film to just a tiny compact
flash
card reader. Now I don't even need to pull the card out of the camera -
it
connects to the PC via WiFi.


Once in a great while I still miss doing some dodging and burning on the
enlarger, but it took me a half hour to get chemicals mixed, get the
trays in place, etc. just to get started.

I used to specialize in large color prints and the setup/cleanup was a
killer. Oddly, I rarely print anything anymore although I've been promising
myself to get a large printer/plotter.

One thing that's really changed is that I am no longer inclined towards dark
backgrounds just to minimize dust problems. When you're blowing up a 35mm
slide to 20 by 24" dust is the number one enemy. No matter how hard I
tried, there would always be some sort of dust blemish. Not a big problem
for negative printing (Spot-off) but a real issue for positive to positive
printing like Cibachrome.

What I *really* like is not having to pay $160 for a brick of 20 rolls of
Ektachrome or Kodachrome and another $100 for 20 processing mailers. That
and the fact that you can create multiple originals with the click of a
mouse and store thousands of photos on a tiny memory card that cost $20.

--
Bobby G.


My OM-2 has not been out of the case for years now.