Spent 4 hours chasing a ground fault that was right in front of me

Ngl I was working on a new residential build in Raleigh last month and kept tripping a GFCI breaker on the kitchen counter circuit. I checked every junction box and outlet in the room twice, even pulled out the fridge and dishwasher. After 4 hours of testing with my meter I finally looked closer at the disposal switch. The damn grounding screw on the switch was touching the metal box just barely. Took me 30 seconds to fix. Has anyone else wasted a whole day on something that simple?

3 comments

3 Comments

patricia_schmidt1428d ago

A grounding screw barely touching a metal box? That is brutal. Four hours of your life gone over a sixteenth of an inch of copper. I would have been furious when I finally saw it, like how did I miss something so obvious. I bet your eyes were playing tricks on you after staring at wires that long. At least you found it yourself though, imagine paying a service call for that.

simonh7428d ago

Yeah, 'brutal' is the right word for it. I heard someone say that with grounding issues, it's almost always something stupid simple like that, not some complex failure.

rileyp4928d ago

Hold on, I'm not totally sure I agree with that. Sometimes grounding issues can be a real nightmare to figure out because they hide so well. You can chase a ground fault for hours only to find out it's a tiny crack in a wire you can't even see without a magnifying glass. That's not exactly "stupid simple" in my book, it's more like a hidden trap that takes forever to uncover. Plus, if you don't have the right tools like a good multimeter, you'll be there twice as long guessing.