Touching the hot side does NOTHING to the GFCI or you until you also touch something else
Ground and it trips
Neutral and it will not trip but you will become the light bulb
GFCI’s only save your tail under a condition when you are in a HOT to GROUND condition
Thus a GROUND FAULT
A kid playing with paper clips in a wall socket can still become toast without tripping the GFCI
Someone help here – I wish I could explain it better
Maybe we need to do a NACHI TV experiment on this one
One could down load it to the Lap top and use it to show a client how these things work
I don’t like the idea of using a kid, his or her pet or a tree rat at a clients kitchen sink – all thought some help from a used house sales person might be possible
In the bucket experiment, the current doesn’t care if it is lighting up a light bulb or heating the water molecules (by the way, maybe we should put a thermometer in the water). It is easy to get hung up on the presence of the water. Stated another way, this is the same thing as simply plugging a lamp into a GFCI on a circuit with an open ground. GFCI won’t trip.
The breaker in the bucket experiment won’t trip until the leads are touched or the resistance of the water is lowered (salt) completing the circuit and tripping the breaker.
Robert, most people get shocked when they are grounded and touch the hot side. The GFCI will save you from that one so it is a good idea. If you get between the hot and neutral you are just “load”
It did not trip the GFCI because there was no electrical current path between hot and ground. If the bucket was metal, it would have tripped.
I worked a lot with water conductivity, and regular tap water is fairly conductive. You have to have some pretty pure water (e.g. distilled) for it to act as an insulator.
Gottya,and just trying to get it totaly straight once and for all.
Electricity is simple on the surface but often hard to imagine as it does not relate to water flowing in a pipe as many of us were taught in school.
I have worked with electric most of my life and still have a hard time with things such as three phase when it comes to understanding.
I think most Inspectors do also, though they will not admit it.
Being able to recite code and actualy understanding theory are different animals.
As far as water conductivity, Sometimes when I use my 3-light tester on a washing machine receptacle it will look OK. If most of the house has open grounds, I will then unplug the washing machine, and more times than not the receptacle turns out to be open ground.
This is true even when the washing machine is connected with rubber hoses. The ground connection was going through the water and feeding back through the washing machine plug to show up as a grounded receptacle.
I’m sure that the current capacity is minimal, but the water was making the ground connection.
I was going to right up a closet location that has Laundry facility for a double stack , but this should be an exception to the GFCI recommendation I would imagine since it is a inaccessible location with the units in place.
I ALWAYS recommend that large appliances (refrigerators, washing machines, clothes dryers) have a proper ground. I do not recommend (even if the code says it’s OK) the use of GFCI on motor driven appliances due to the risk of nuicance tripping, which in the case of a fridge or freezer, could result in food spoilage.
Also as was mentioned in another thread recently, a GFCI might save your life, but it can still be VERY painful!
I hadn’t heard that, but would be very interested in having more information on that. I will have to do some research. I did run across a sump pump recently that had tripped the GFCI receptacle.
Thanks for the heads up.
There is no such thing as nuisance tripping, and there never was. There is, and always was, “reason tripping”. It’s not always clear what the reason is, so people term it a nuisance. Proper testing will always reveal the reason. Sump pump or a refrigerator that trips a GFCI is doing so for a very valid reason, which is quite measurable and demonstrable.
“Improved immunity to high-frequency noise reduces nuisance tripping”
&
“Advanced electronics design provides superior resistance to electrical surges and over-voltages”
[FONT=Arial][size=2]It sounds like refrigerators and GFCI circuits have both gotten better at not tripping during high impedence start-up surges.
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