Hospital grade GFCI tripping??

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Its only one year old and it's hospital grade, I paid like $30 for it. Saturday night and just now it tripped.

I have it located in the back of the interior of the stand, above the sump. Its been fine for a year and now has tripped twice in three days.

Is it too close to the sump water

Any thoughts or advice on this?
 
Nutramar Foods
Mine will trip in the basement if the humidity gets to high. Could also be corrosion?
 
could be one of your pumps or lights is about to go bad and when it comes on its over drawing power...this is more a likely source OR the gfi is going bad it happens...they are made for kitchens and bathrooms where humidity is always there
 
Nutramar Foods
It just tripped again, this sucks

I have three other two outlet receptacles tied into the GFCI, that means it could be a problem with any one of of the other three recepticles, not neccessarily the GFCI itself that's causing it to trip, correct?
 
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joec said:
It just tripped again, this sucks

I have three other two outlet receptacles tied into the GFCI, that means it could be a problem with any one
of of the other three recepticles, not neccessarily the GFCI itself that's causing it to trip, correct?
Click to expand...

correct ..think of the gfi as a surge protector..either it is bad or something in the loop is surging

can you possibly try isolating the other circuits one by one and see if it still trips?
 
joec said:
It just tripped again, this sucks

I have three other two outlet receptacles tied into the GFCI, that means it could be a problem with any one of of the other three recepticles, not neccessarily the GFCI itself that's causing it to trip, correct?
Click to expand...

Anything downstream on the GFCI could also cause it to trip.
 
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Jeight said:
can you possibly try isolating the other circuits one by one and see if it still trips?
Click to expand...

That's what I will try. I have a high quality power strip that is plugged directly into the GFCI. If I switch all the power into that power strip and don't plug anything into the three outlets that are wired together in the same electrical box upstream of the GFCI will that allow me to rule out that the GFCI is the problem, if it no longer trips?
 
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It needs current moving through it to test it. If it’s just wired but not dealing with a load it should not trip unless there is a short in wires downstream.
 
I bought a few Blank-Face GFCIs recently and the manual on the Eaton branded ones said that at some point the unit will reach end-of-life and will not be able to be reset.

That said, they do go bad internally.

Replace it, they are cheap enough and see what happens. You don't want it to trip if faulty when you are away or..... worse, not trip when you need it to.
 
Top Shelf Aquatics
Gfci outlets can and will go bad and they are very prone to nuisance trips. I don't trust them on anything that I need to count on working, especially my tank
 
ok, I had everything plugged into the GFCI and downstream to the powerstrip (PS only like 6 weeks old), nothing upstream of the GFCI.

Does that mean that the GFCI or the powerstrip is bad, and its not the three receptacles upstream of the of the GFCI?
 
Correct. The GFCI protects that outlet, and anything downstream from it. Nothing upstream should impact it.
 
Top Shelf Aquatics
I've had gfci outlets trip with nothing plugged into the entire circuit, it's most likely the outlet itself. The only thing a gfci is meant to do is prevent electrocution, the way they are designed leaves them very susceptible to failure
 
Mjrenz said:
Anything connected to the load side of the gfci outlet can cause it to trip
Click to expand...

And the load would only be on that outlet, or those connected downsteam on the load side. He can hit "Test" and see what outlets are on the load side.
 
Avast
One other thing about gfci outlets, besides them being overpriced, and relatively useless for anything that's critical to stay operational, the test button is only going to let you know it will trip if it needs to and not be any guarantee there won't be nuisance trips.
 
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