>What concerns me is that it might trip from a power surge or during a storm.
It might. But could you give a scenario of how that could theoretically be possible?
In other words, give me a scenario which will create a 5 milliamp current imbalance between UGC and GC, or a surge pulse that will create a magnetic field of sufficient strength and duration to be sensed as a ground fault.
I'm not saying that such a scenario doesn't exist. But I personally haven't been able dream one up. And no one else has ever offered me one either that wasn't actually a ground fault.
>If someone is away, or in the case of the deep freeze in the basement that no one opens for weeks it could be a real downer.
I totally agree, and I don't and probably would not use a GFCI for a freezer.
>If you've had no problem for 7 years that still doesn't mean that it can't happen tomorrow.
There are a lot of things that could happen tomorrow. But I can't think of a scenario in which the GFCI will trip that was not a ground fault.
I forgot to mention before, I used to run my water pump off a GFCI and it never tripped either. (Later I changed it to 220 V and gave up the GFCI protection.)
My experience has been that only ground faults trip GFCIs.
