The Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) is an important safety device required for electrical circuits in wet areas of a home. GFCIs protect against an electrical shock by tripping within a fraction of a second whenever 6 milliamps or more of the current leaving on the hot wire of a circuit is not returning on the neutral wire. The current that has gone astray is called a “ground fault,” which could cause a shock or even electrocution of a person if the current is flowing through their body, so the GFCI “interrupts” the circuit when this occurs.
A GFCI can be in a receptacle, like in the photo above, integral with a circuit breaker in an electric panel, or installed as a “dead front” GFCI in electrical box by itself.
But here are five unsafe situations that GFCIs do not protect you from:
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1)A GFCI does not trip when a person contacts both the hot and neutral wires of a circuit and all the current flows through their body. It does not recognize the problem because no current is leaking from the circuit. While this sounds like a farfetched scenario, we have on numerous occasions come across bare “live” wires at the end of an electrical cable laying half-buried in the insulation in an attic. Inadvertently putting a hand down of the wires while crawling in the attic would be an example of how this situation could happen.
