New homeowner here, so I’m just learning how to maintain my property after renting for so many years. I’ve learned SO much from reading the threads for the past few weeks.
I have a GFCI in my garage that controls the bathroom outlets. When it rains real heavy for days and the air is very humid, it trips, and it takes a day or so after the rain before I can reset it. It’s pretty inconvenient during the rainy season.
Would a new GFCI help to prevent this (the current one is probably original–the house was built in 1991), is there another fix, or do I just have to live with it? Thanks!
Replies
Best would be to chart out how the wire runs from the garage to the bathroom, et al, and put the bathroom (and any other interior outlets) on its own GFCI.
But likely the garage GFCI is also feeding an outdoor outlet that is the one that gets wet. An appropriate weather-proof cover on that outlet will reduce the number of wet-weather trips.
Sometimes, not always, when they build a lot of homes in the same area,as in housing tracts, the do everything on the cheap. One way to cut costs is to use one breaker to supply outdoor convenience outlets, garage outlets and bath outlets that all require GFCI. If the outdoor outlet has a bad weather seal that allows a little water to get in which then causes the whole branch to go down, until the outdoor outlet has had a chance to dry out.
Check to see if you have exterior outlets and if so, are they tied into the same branch circuit as garage and bath outlets? If you do, I would hot foot it down to the supply store and buy a new exterior outlet with good weather seal and install that first. If that doesn't do it, change the GFCI breaker for another one as the old one may be faulty and tripping too early.
Modern GFCI have ratings in the range of 5 -6 milliampere ratings for certain situations and 20 to 25 milliampere ratings for others. Often, exterior and interior branch circuits don't use the same breaker but then again, when they cut corners, they cut corners wherever they can to save a few bucks.
As far as I can tell, there are no exterior outlets, and no other inside outlets are controlled by the GFCI in question. I've decided to replace it and see whether the problem still exists. Thanks all!
I'll bet you there's an exterior outlet you haven't found yet.
People never lie so much as before an election, during a war, or after a hunt. --Otto von Bismarck
You might find one in the crawl space, if you have one...but, I'll put my money a bad breaker, we see a lot of them. Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."