Ahhh, GFI Flambe!!

From the looks of that second pic, luckily that surrounding wood was wet from all the rain or this could've been a post-house fire repair call!

Was either cover open when it got soaked, or was the water up that high?

Edited for my dyslexic spelling..

[This message has been edited by mxslick (edited 01-08-2005).]

Man, there's been some serious cooking going on in there.
Looks more like bad sealing technique than anything else.
Or bad gaskets.

I'll lay bets there were X-mas light pluged in there and left on during all the rain. They removed the evidence by the time you got there Randy. (Top outlet on the right had a cord in it when this happened, you can see where the smoke went around the ground pin, and the slots are scraped free of smoke when they removed it.)

And it's impossable to tell if the thing on the left was a GFI? From the face... you can see it was by the pic with the cover off.

[This message has been edited by e57 (edited 01-09-2005).]

I'd bet that the one on the left was... look closely at the center and the squared - off "burn holes" in the center, as well as the sillhouette of the outlet body, with the recessed screw holders...

Why do we assume this had anything to do with rain? There are a few other things that could have caused this.

Electricmanscott:


Such as? The failure looks too violent to have been from a simple overload.... just my 2 cents..

Randy: How much damage to the wiring inside the box?

Mike (mamills)

I am not saying water wasn't the culprit just that I don't automatically assume it to be because it is outdoors. A loose connection on a heavily loaded circuit coils certainly have done it.

The receptacle on the left is a Leviton GFCI.

Sorry can't resist this...

The one of the left is not like the other....

The one of the left is more broke than the one on the right....

Electrical stuff runs on magic smoke. Once it gets out it won't work anymore.....

There, I feel better now.
So where's the 'in-use' cover??

Perhaps a few miles of extension cords were plugged into this.

So is there a violation that caused this? Why did the failure get to this point?

RSlater,
RSmike

Dunno. they need to be washed off

Had a co-worker I was doing some work for complain that after he accidentally sprayed his GFCI receptacle, he heard a "frying" noise, then it didn't work anymore.

I replaced it, and performed an autopsy... showing him the extra crispy circuitboard.

Something about water and electricity

When I remove the 30-amp fuses from people's fuseboxes they say, "We've never had a problem with it".

Dave

I have had this problem before.When my boss only used immitation gfi recepts. Every time we initially put power to them they would make a loud BUZZZ sound then months later we always had callbacks only for the immitation gfi and also ;callbacks about them actually burning up but never the Levitton gfi...but this particular gfi looks aweful close to Levitton so i would only think it was the rain ...Or the ignorance of a in-use cover in the rain..

Or or a potential overload condition......

As anal retentive and cheap as I am I purchased four GCFIs, fed them from my load panel, and then fed them to the various branch circuits throughout the house.

The outlets serve as GFCIs for the various branch circuits and are actually handy for plugging in stuff.

It makes it easy to test all the GFCI circuits, I routinely get to see the little green lights (not sure if the lamp is failsafe indication of the GFCI status), and I didn't spend a bunch on GFCI breakers.

Can anyone see any CODE issues with doing this?

RSlater,
RSmike

Actually, RSMike, your solution is 'echoed' in the 2005 code, as another way to AFCI protect bedrooms....now, if we can get someone to make an AFCI device.

There is no "real" code issue. The only "issue" is the one that comes from having the gfi remote from the fault; sometimes it can be difficult to find the GFI. Yours being in a central location, near the panel, addresses the issue.

Even where the GFCI circuit has to be dedicated to a particular room (bathrooms and kitchens come to mind), I doubt any inspector would raise an objection.

A dummy GFCI without a receptical might be more apropriate however for bathroom and kitchen circuts... Wouldnt want to accidentally make that SA circut accesable outside of the kitchen now would you?