I’ve found the condition in waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many of the properties that I have renovated.
I don’t really care what the underlying cause is. The fact remains that the initial electrical surge can trip GFCI’s. Why that initial electrical surge does it is not my call. That’s for the electrician to find out.
I had a very well-respected electrician call me on this a couple of months ago. He is so well-respected, having been in business for 37 years, that I use him quite often, as well.
Unfortunately, I guess he was busy and didn’t want to go check out the situation and possibly make some money making whatever necessary repairs. Instead, he simply wrote my Clients a letter saying that “appliances will never cause a GFCI to trip.” Now that’s a pretty bold statement, and considering that I had used him quite often, distressed me, distressed me so much that I had to call in Ms Margarita and Dr Cuervo for consultation. So I called my Clients, told them that I respected this electrician but that he was wrong about this, and offered to meet the electrician and my Clients at the site to show the electrician that this appliance (the dishwasher) did, indeed, trip the GFCI circuit when one pushed the start button on the dishwasher. We met at the site and I showed Mr. Electrician that the initial electrical surge from pushing the start button on the dishwasher did, indeed, trip the GFCI circuit. That’s not supposed to happen.
Now why it was happening, again, is not my concern. The fact is that it was happening. It could have been a faulty dishwasher, a miswired GFCI, a faulty GFCI, whatever.
Mr. Electrician agreed that it should not happen and vowed to look into it and fix whatever was causing the problem. Why he didn’t just go out there to see what was happening instead of writing a letter is beyond me, but whatever.
What Jerry posted at inspectionnews.com indicated that the electrical powers-that-be and/or the code gurus and/or the manufacturers recognize that it happens, and apparently happens waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too frequently, and are finally taking steps with new technology to correct the problem.