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Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V1 #323



> > Date: Mon, 11 Mar 96 10:58:08 PST
> > Subject: Re: electrical safety
> > 
> > >KB Koh <KB_Koh at ccm_ipn.intel.com> wrote:
> > >What is that Ground-Fault-Interrupt? Is it the same as ELCB (Earth Leakage 
> > >Circuit Breaker). Over here it is required by law for every home to have it.
> > nguyenh at nosc_mil (Hoa G. Nguyen) responded:
> > Sounds like they are the same device.  In my city, as of 8 years ago when I
> > bought my house, GFI was required for the bathroom outlet circuits in new
> > houses only.  I don't know the current law.
> I think this is rather silly, because like KB Koh points out, it's
> really easy to protect the entire house by putting it at the entry
> point to the house.

	Hmm.. one extra hot shower and pop.. the whole house goes out.

> Or, you could protect each circuit to the house
> so one trip doesn't shut down all the circuits.  I'll GFI _all_
> outlets in the "dream home" when I build it (you never know where you'll
> end up putting that fish tank!  :-); but if you don't want to do your
> whole house, I do think that any outlets around the fish tanks (any 
> devices in our fish tanks) should absolutely be on a circuit that is 
> GFI protected.  The GFI outlets are $8 compared to $.50, but you can 
> put a zillion $.50 outlets on the same circuit _after_ the GFI.

	GFCI's sometimes trip for reasons unrelated to people being
electrocuted.  Thunderstorms are purported to cause them to trip.  I've even
experienced random trippings without the help of thunderstorms.
	Because of this, you probably don't want some critical circuits on the
GFCI.. like your refrigerator and furnace.  By this same reasoning, it's
worthwhile considering running an airpump in each tank plugged into a separate,
non-GFCI protected, outlet so at least there's still water movement if the
GFCI trips.
	And to tie this back into plants and aquarium keeping, my GFCI recently
saved one of my fish tanks and possible the entire house when the (grounded)
light system failed (still don't know how or why) just after I left for work
one day recently.