A Short Lesson About Ground Fault Interruptors for Homeowners
In December, we moved to a new home. This home was Last night I was I unplugged the damaged cord so that I That caused me to think about ground fault I went back in and reset every single circuit This caused me to mentally establish the If
built in 1994, so while it may not be state-of-the-art, it is much newer
than any other home I’ve ever lived in. It’s also probably a great deal
newer than any apartment I lived in before that. So every once in a
while something goes wrong and I find that it’s a “learning
experience” to figure out how to fix it because the new house is so
different from anything I’ve known before.
trimming the boxwood hedges around the back of the house. It was
something I’d never done before, so I was nervous about it, but I seemed
to be doing a pretty darned good job (if I say so myself). As I was
trimming the hedges around the ornamental fish pond out back, I lost my
balance a bit and the trimmers caught the power cord for the pond’s
water pump. Naturally, this shorted out the wiring and (I thought)
tripped a circuit breaker.
could stop the short circuit and went inside to the breaker box in the
basement. After looking very carefully at all the breakers, none
appeared to be tripped. Nevertheless, I reset every one of them that I
thought could possibly be the problem. No good. Still no power to any
outlet outside.
interruptors (GFIs). These devices look like a standard electrical
outlet, but with an extra button or two on them. The purpose of the
device is to prevent electric shock in the event (for instance) I had
fallen into the ornamental pond carrying the electric hedge trimmers. I
figured the short-circuit caused by cutting the pond pump wire probably
tripped one of these rather than a circuit breaker in the breaker box.
After walking all around the house, I saw that none of the outside
outlets had a GFI on it. I figured I must have just missed the breaker
in the basement.
breaker. No good. Still no power outside. Totally lost at this point to
explain the lack of power outside, I spoke with a family friend (who
built his own house, so he knows quite a bit about how houses work). He
told me that it is possible the GFI for the outside outlets isn’t
outside at all. It could be an outlet in the kitchen, a bathroom, a
bedroom, etc. I didn’t know it could work that way. I went around to all
the GFIs in the house and, sure enough, a GFI in the downstairs bathroom
had been tripped. After resetting that GFI, power was restored to the
outside outlets.
following “electrical troubleshooting” procedure when a device
quits working:
unplugged.
house.
worn outlet can lose contact.
in another outlet that you know has power.
electric outlet isn’t connected to a switch that has been flipped
off.
to the power outage, remembering that the GFI might be in a different
room or on a different floor of the house.
breaker that might have been tripped by your activity.
all the above fails, it’s either time to call an electrician or a more
knowledgeable friend.