Trouble shooting what happen??

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I had a circuit where the frig and a gfci was on the same circuit. Now the frig was NOT on the load side, it was parrelled off of the gfci. The gfci load fed outlets in the dining room. Well sometimes when the frig kicks on, the gfci would pop and kill power to the other outlets. Of course the frig stayed on.

At first i thought maybe it was the shared neutral, but i never did change any of that. All i did was tighten up the LINE side on the gfci. It was loose cause soon as i pulled it out of the box it came out.

Now everything seems to be working fine. the Frig kicks on as usually but the gfci never pops. The only thing i see sometimes is a slight fluctuation in current when watching tv. Can this sudden spike in current cause a gfci to pop even though it on the line side when there is a loose connection??

At least thats my suspension. I know how gfci's work, They sense an imbalance between the hot and neutral on on the load side . This frig is off the line, its parrelled. makes me say hmmm. So what happen??
 

Sparky Joe

Member
Location
Salt Lake City
That is a weird one, but you are right on how GFI's work. I have to ask, is the frig and din. room connected with one cable, sharing a neutral, this would cause nuisance tripping, but since it is fixed now I imagine that's not the case.

I've noticed that several times about the screws on the GFI's not holding very well, it always seems that with a couple twists of the wire it will come loose, I wonder why they haven't addressed it yet.

GFI's though are a simple yet unpredictable device. In theory if all the current on the hot comes back on the neutral then it should work fine, but....and I'm hoping someone can explain this.... in class we connected a hot wire and a neutral to the two ends of a pickle on top of a wood board to a standard breaker and watched it sizzle, then did the same experiment with a GFI breaker and it would trip instantly even though there was no other current path but through the neutral. No one could figure it out, and the teacher thought it had something to do with the cooking process???
 

bikeindy

Senior Member
Location
Indianapolis IN
I was at a home a couple months ago and the upstairs bathroom GFCI was tripping when the dishwasher was running. I thought that was starnge and didn't know why the dishwasher was sharing the bathroom circuit but desided to simply move the dishwasher to the line side, quess what it already was on the line side. I thought HMMMM. went to the panel and found the wire loose on the breaker. tightened it up and there we go. so it seems to be the same problem. I don't think it has to due with the sudden draw of current i quess it still is sencing that imbalance. oh with my problem the dishwasher also quit which was even a stranger problem but I think that had to due with the loose wire at the breaker.
 

Jim W in Tampa

Senior Member
Location
Tampa Florida
Sparky Joe said:
That is a weird one, but you are right on how GFI's work. I have to ask, is the frig and din. room connected with one cable, sharing a neutral, this would cause nuisance tripping, but since it is fixed now I imagine that's not the case.

I've noticed that several times about the screws on the GFI's not holding very well, it always seems that with a couple twists of the wire it will come loose, I wonder why they haven't addressed it yet.

GFI's though are a simple yet unpredictable device. In theory if all the current on the hot comes back on the neutral then it should work fine, but....and I'm hoping someone can explain this.... in class we connected a hot wire and a neutral to the two ends of a pickle on top of a wood board to a standard breaker and watched it sizzle, then did the same experiment with a GFI breaker and it would trip instantly even though there was no other current path but through the neutral. No one could figure it out, and the teacher thought it had something to do with the cooking process???

You forgot about one of the conductors.Pickle to board to earth.That is why it tripped
 
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