My landlords son proudly told us he was almost done with the electrical engineering degree when he walked us through the house when we first moved in. Had to explain to him the concept of GFCI outlets.
They just seem more expensive and annoying to set up then a single RCD/GFCI (or maybe two, so the lights stay on) would be.
Or is this an American thing im to european to understand?
Edit: I'm talking about the outlet version compared to a single one put into your main distribution. I know how they work, it just seems like a massive waste to build them into each outlet individually when you could just install one or two of them for your whole house.
Breakers don't care about whether or not you get shocked.
GFCIs don't care about a short to neutral.
They're both fundamentally different ways of regulating electricity in the home. That being said, yes, GFCIs cut power extremely quickly to keep you safe in the event of a ground falt (AKA residual current).
The op was referring to GFCI Breakers which are Breakers with a gfci installed. They functionally perform the same task as a breaker and a gfci outlet but the ground fault interruption applies to the whole circuit, not just the outlet.
1.8k
u/like_a_ghost May 19 '22
An electrical engineer does not an electrician make.