ECN Electrical Forum
Discussion Forums for Electricians, Inspectors and Related Professionals

Nope.

The electronics sense a difference in current between the outgoing and returning conductors. As long as none of those sneaky little electrons find a way to leave the wire partway through the circuit, there will be no overall effect.

I have heard there is a maximum amount of connected wire you can have because of capacitive coupling but so far I haven''t seen that and I have some pretty long GFCI runs. The longest is THHN in EMT which is supposed to be a worst case scenario.

Greg, I am not sure that capacitive coupling is what you mean. In the case of extremely long runs of THHN there will be current leakage through the insulation of the wire to the ground which could add up to trip a GFCI. This can be mitigatted by going to a better insulation type like XHHW. But given enough length even it won't work. This really dosen't matter to much though because we have exceeded even the usual operation lengths of the circuit (volatage drop and it is better to place another panel to shorten the lengths of runs). I have not bothered to calculate what those lengths may be, if I had time I would. I just all stems from electricity takes all paths and even insulation is a path, just a mighty poor one.

Receptacles are cheaper and often far more convenient. There's little reason to go with a GFCI breaker unless it's a situation where a GFCI receptacle just isn't a practical solution.

As to trips... Mine trip routinely, when I leave extension cords on the ground in the rain.

hmm, well i never really liked the idea of gfci's anywhere near the weather. Maybe i've seen a little too much abuse, incidents where the line side could be compromised, missing covers, etc.

Usually, i'll start a 'rough out' with a service gfci under , or near the panel. I'll make single runs back to that gfci to all the non-dedicated gfci's. That way they can be parsed out into dedicated circuits in the future.

That's paid off a number of times for me on those 'don't know what i'm building 'til i get there'jobs i've had the good fortune to step into...

~S~