revisiting the gfci

[JPG]

I cannot say I do not need to read anything(ever). My experience may be tainted.

That said this thread has deviated from where it should have stayed.

The intent/purpose of a GFI is to disconnect the voltage from a load(connected receptacle) if an imbalance in current of the hot pin of the receptacle vs the current of the neutral pin of the receptacle. Granted there have been additional failure modes introduced since their inception, but this is the primary purpose.

As such there is NO intent to protect from use that does NOT involve faults anywhere else other than that downstream from the GFI. It is not designed to protect any one fiddling with the wiring that is not downstream from the receptacle nor any thing getting across the hot/neutral downstream from the receptacle. Wet only provides a lower resistance path than dry.

Whether a fault current is to ground or some other path is irrelevant. If it exists, there will be an imbalance in the input currents from the hot/neutral.

I have purposefully used GFI here since that is the origin of all that followed. Today we have GFCI which simply add a set of output terminals that allow the GFI to protect additional 'regular' receptacles connected downstream.

A person becoming part of a series path only can occur if one is fiddling with the wiring while energized. That resultant current is not a fault. The idiot fiddling is what is at fault.

Not sure how the person under the sink that is laying on a wet surface fiddling can get energized without being detected by an upstream GFI. Methinks if that person became in series, the wetness was not a factor or otherwise a fault current would have existed.

Now about that electric fence we must recognize that they are typically(back when I understood them anyway) an inductive discharge that is essentially DC. That is a recipe for heart stoppage.

[Hobbyman2]

Thanks JPG.
I did go to the link , it was a link about how they connected the led indicator lights in the GFCI receptacle through a IC chip , regardless of how or what they do Einstein and Tesla both proved this theory , no mater what they come up with according to science and the data provided by every scientific test done to man kind up to this day you can not stop the threat of a shock or worse in a ground fault circuit with out a ground fault or {{ over current protection }} triggering the protection device . this thread seems to be going in a direction un intended by me but that's ok , I am more than happy to see this unravel in a way that can save a life .

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I am correcting this post with the following , {{over current protection}}

[Hobbyman2]

Thanks again JPG
In the case of the guy under the sink you seem to assume the disposal was alone and on its own circuit ? you assume there is nothing else about to become active in the circuit ? lesson #1 never assume anything ?? so how did you determine this ? as a technician over 40 years I have seem people put sump pumps , out door lights on timers out side receptacles and other devices on the same circuit as a disposal ,as far as them being a idiot ? if you are in a old work situation you have no idea what is going to energize at any given time , should the guy have turned off the breaker before working on the thing ,that was the lesson of that day in class , this is the only way to be safe ,, as long as the grounds and neutrals in that circuit are isolated to that circuit - so here we go again- how can you be sure everything is as it should be unless you wired it ?? , I have seen grounds tied into other grounds and neutrals , especially in out door lights or wires going to a garage , in one case a guy wired the bare grounds from the grounding screw to the neutral at every receptacle and every time the home owner touched the screw on the cover they got shocked, I have worked on many live circuits through the years just like many others , and from the sounds of it ,, many here ,. it was mentioned here that touching one side of the power wires was safe ??? is it ??? this proves it is not safe and never was .and thank you for seeing that , its not a opinion that can be debated ,it should be taught in every class and school in the nation , its science , I / we don't need to prove it ,Einstein and Tesla proved it years ago .

[JPG]

I made no assumption re the conditions of the under the sink scenario that was not relevant to the statement made. Extrapolating unintended details leads to confusion. ;>}

[Hobbyman2]

As such there is NO intent to protect from use that does NOT involve faults anywhere else other than that downstream from the GFI. It is not designed to protect any one fiddling with the wiring that is not downstream from the receptacle nor any thing getting across the hot/neutral downstream from the receptacle. Wet only provides a lower resistance path than dry.
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I assumed ,,,,,,, this was you discussing the point ? one does not need be down stream , all one needs is to enter into the path of current flow at any point in the scenario presented . you can touch a wheel on a locomotive engine at while at idle , but touching one while the engine is running down the tracks is not a good idea . ok that wasn't my best analogy !!

[JPG]

Actually a decent analogy re riskiness.