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New GFCI Requirements

From Conformity:

New requirements governing the design of ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCIs) are soon scheduled to come into effect.

The new requirements, which are part of the recently revised harmonized standard, UL 943, Safety Standard for Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters (GFCIs), are intended to increase consumer safety and reduce the risk of household electrocutions.

Specifically,

1) the revised standard includes an ?end-of-life? provision which requires a non-functioning GFCI to either render itself incapable of delivering power, or to indicate by visual or audible means that it must be replaced.

2) In addition, GFCIs must now be designed to deny power to the receptacle face if the device has been miswired during installation.

The new requirements are scheduled to become effective as of July 28,

2006, after which manufacturers must cease production of older versions and introduce GFCIs designed to meet the new requirements.
Reply to
Fred Bloggs
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You forgot that you have to say, "Pretty please", before you plug into it ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
     It\'s what you learn, after you know it all, that counts.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

Sounds like a useful improvement--we all know from Three Mile Island that safety features that aren't tested realistically are worse than useless. (Well, useless from our point of view, anyway--they do provide cover for the derrieres of the guilty if anything goes wrong.)

As long as the new ones don't cost $100, so that nobody buys them.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Thanks! Valuable post. (As always) Ed

Reply to
ehsjr

might be time to stock up on the old ones...

Mark

Reply to
Mark

Oh *sure* ..... I can hear how that would work: "Nuh-no, Mr. Contractor. We prefer the old, much less expensive unit."

When the old-spec. parts become unavailable, the cost of new production ones will get passed right along to Mom & Pop. Remember how dear GFCI's were when they were new technology?

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Michael
Reply to
Michael

Round my neck of the woods, new construction has to have GFCI breakers, so the new outlets are going to be mainly for retrofitting, I would expect.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Reply to
Phil Hobbs

I wonder how they handle the case of the final contact welding closed, or something like that. Some sort of mechanical redundancy, with something fusable in the loop?

John

Reply to
John Larkin

In article , Michael wrote: [....]

A high priced GFI caused many houses to have one GFI shared between the two bathrooms and perhaps the outside outlet. This is ok until the GFI starts tripping every few seconds.

Today each outlet has its own because the cost of the extra wiring isn't worth it.

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kensmith@rahul.net   forging knowledge
Reply to
Ken Smith

You've been to my house? It's only happened a couple of times, but resetting the GFCI (outside, on the front porch) isn't much fun when one is upstairs doing one's thing in the bathroom. It wasn't too much fun for me either.

With the reset (and test) on the GFCI.

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  Keith
Reply to
Keith

One obvious feature would be a periodic trip in the event that the devices aren't tested regularly. Who should I write to?

John

Reply to
John Larkin

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