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Good luck finding an easy-to-install whole house GFCI in the US market. IMO there should be standardized trip curves so that outlet GFCIs can coordinate with b
by amluto 4y ago
Good luck finding an easy-to-install whole house GFCI in the US market.
IMO there should be standardized trip curves so that outlet GFCIs can coordinate with branch breaker GFCIs, which can coordinate with whole-house or other larger GFCIs, etc.
You really don’t want a 5mA GFCI on your house. You do want a 5mA GFCI somewhere involved for a regular outlet, though, especially if it’s anywhere damp or wet.
(And you probably do want a GFCI tripping at a larger leakage current on any outdoor circuit. Leakage on crappy outdoor wiring is very very common and can go undetected for years. And for some reason code allows new outdoor circuits to be run in galvanized steel conduit, and there seems to be little enforcement of the use of appropriate wire nuts and such outdoors. You can buy actual high quality submersible wire nuts, and stainless steel outdoor electrical boxes exist (at absolutely obscene prices), but they’re rare. So even nominally very fancy newish buildings do things like using regular galvanized steel outlet boxes outdoors by the ocean with predictable results.)
(A GFCI outlet does not help at all of your whole outlet box floors. A 100mA GFCI upstream would presumably trip very quickly.)
- rootusrootus 4y ago> Good luck finding an easy-to-install whole house GFCI in the US market. Not sure I'd want one, to be honest. There are some devices that trip GFCIs and I don't think I'd like my mains to trip that easily. I just use GFCI breakers as necessary. And certain circuits I go with AFCI instead.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tablespoon 4y ago> And certain circuits I go with AFCI instead. IIRC, in the US, code now requires AFCI pretty much everywhere except when GFCI is required. And AFCI is a bit of a PITA, to the point where electricians advise me against adding anything new to existing circuits in my house (because then the local inspector would require a new AFCI breaker, apparently in other areas the inspectors are less picky and would be satisfied with an AFCI outlet).
- rootusrootus 4y agoLast time I had work done, which was about six months ago, we didn't have to use AFCI for anything other than bedrooms (and maybe others, nothing that applied to the four circuits I was having installed though). Maybe a very recent change? I agree on them being a PITA sometimes. They're somewhat prone to thinking that electric motors (e.g. fans) are trying to start a fire.
- coryrc 4y agoIt's a fairly recent ("recent" = changes every few years) change; your municipality probably hadn't adopted the newest code yet.
- atoav 4y ago> There are some devices that trip GFCIs In Germany where I lived for the past decade I have never seen a non-faulty device trip a RCB. The ones that tripped it hat the full 230V on their metal case.
- rootusrootus 4y agoI've got three examples for ya. 1. Deep freezers are prone (for reasons unclear to me at my level of knowledge) to tripping GFCIs. For this reason they're allowed to be on a non-GFCI outlet in the garage (must be a single outlet receptacle by itself on the circuit). 2. Downstream GFCIs are prone to messing with upstream GFCIs, so you should not put them in series. My RV has it's own power distribution panel with GFCI, so it gets plugged into a dedicated TT-30 RV outlet without GFCI protection. 3. My Tesla doesn't like GFCIs at all. It does a brief ground check before charging and trips the outlet. Known issue, solution is to find an outlet that isn't protected by a GFCI. In a pinch, when I was renting my first Tesla from Turo I stole the freezer outlet in the garage for a few hours at a time to charge the car. When I bought my own Tesla, I put in level 2 of course, problem solved. I'm all for GFCIs on individual circuits, that makes total sense. Just not on the mains.
- silisili 4y agoMy brand new Samsung fridge has tripped the upstream GFCI since day 1. Called an electrician, and he just moved it off the upstream circuit and called it a day
- atoav 4y agoI know many (european) electricians that would label that a wreckless action. It would also be illegal over here. Weirdly enough Samsung fridges work over here without tripping RCDs.
- worthless-trash 4y agoNow i'm a little confused, I think i have a global one of these in my house. I don't think there is a power point that isn't protected by one of these earth leakage type devices (I think they are called different things in Australia). They have been standard for a long, long time. How do telsas charge in Australia ?
- sandos 4y agoIve never even heard of a 5mA GFCI. In Sweden afaik 30mA is the standard, and I assume much less likely to be tripped up by tiny faults. Also, a GFCI install here is a simple and cheap affair. Does not require checking everything else or inspection or upgrading of fuse boxes or consumer unit.
- amluto 4y agoIn the US, 5mA is nominally for protection of personnel and 30mA is for protection of equipment. We don’t have the fancy GFCI classes and selectivity that Europe seems to use.