[TowerTalk] GFI Circuits

[W2RU - Bud Hippisley]

At 08:30 2005-01-21, K8RI on Tower Talk wrote:
>Another option is to use GFI breakers...which are expensive.

A problem with using GFI breakers instead of GFI outlets is that the entire branch circuit becomes an antenna.  My house came with a GFI breaker on a branch circuit that fed an outdoor outlet on the porch plus an outlet and a light fixture in the master bathroom; whenever I used the linear amplifier on 80 meters, the breaker tripped.  For some reason, my XYL found that unacceptable.  I wound up making the bathroom a completely separate branch (which it should have been in the first place) fed from an ordinary non-GFI breaker and terminated in a GFI outlet in the bathroom.  

I haven't gotten around to buying a suitable GFI outlet for the porch yet, so I still knock that circuit off whenever I'm on 80 with the amplifier.  But I'm the only one who ever plugs anything into the porch outlet, so it's no big deal.

Yes, you can feed multiple outlets in a room from a single GFI -- the licensed electricians here (New York State) do it all the time.  Just don't let the length of the branch circuit "beyond" the GFI (i.e., between the GFI outlet and the farthest protected outlet on the branch) get too long or you'll have yourself an antenna, just as if you had a GFI breaker at the beginning of your branch circuit.

Bud, W2RU