About a month ago, one of the GFCI receptacles that the electrician installed in my kitchen about a year and a half ago stopped working — no current to the connected toaster even when I pressed the reset button. I finally got around to replacing the receptacle today, and guess what I found when I took the thing apart for kicks?
Four dead ants.
One in a crevice on the exterior of the reset button, one on one of the plastic walls of the receptacle away from anything electrical, and two right near the yellow solid-state-looking thingy underneath the test and reset buttons.
I know that the origin of the word “bug” to describe a computer problem attributable to hardware or software malfunction was a moth that got into ENIAC. Do you suppose these ants could be the reason for the failure of my GFCI receptacle?
Rebeccah
Replies
Possibly.
Dead ants might attract and/or hold moisture and crud. Collectively this could allow enough current leakage to cause the GFI to be unreliable.
Also they might be in the relay and blocking it open.
I had a customer with one outdoors for a pond that was tripped and would not reset. Replaced it and stuff kept falling out. It appeared to be earwig eggs, probably a large spoonfull. Looked like gunpowder.
Edited 11/12/2005 9:50 pm ET by rasconc