Thank god for my GFCI!!!!

[latino277]

I woke up this morning to my system being completely off and the smell of plastic burning... Scary way to wake up!:irked::shocked: well to make a long story short. One of the sockets on my DC is shorted (and it doesn't seem to have any water damage).

The funny thing is that I went so long with out one (~2 1/2 yrs - 3 yrs) and was kinda reluctant to put one in when I moved my tank around this time last yr... "$14 for this crap..." What a dumb Puerto Rican I am. Thank god I took the advice of some posts that I had read here and on RC.

Well there is my drama for the morning!

 

[steveo32]

Good thing you did spend the 14 bucks on that piece of crap. Thankfully no hurt and ther ewasn't any greater damage.

 

[latino277]

YUP... thank god....

 

[shorjai]

close call. but lucky everything is okay.

 

[latino277]

yup... close call... for 2 reasons
1) My tank is by the door, so if there was a fire. I would have been trapped.... Time to rethink that as well....
2) I sleep like the dead... I wouldn't have know what was going on until it was to late.

 

[bueller]

good thing, ALWAYS USE GFI OUTLETS WITH TANKS.... better to lose power then your home, possible life

I also keep a fire ext. next to all my tanks

 

[latino277]

I will be getting two fire ext... this weekend... I am not taking any more chances.

 

[dreko]

I bought a GFCI heavy duty extension cord from home depot. (The yellow heavy gauge ones)
It would 'trip' off on it's own from time to time...
I read somewhere online these were really sensitive to any stray voltage in the tank...

Is this true?
Does any member here have one of these? Does it work?
How about a grounding probe?

Thanks
Andre

 

[cybermeez]

I changed out all the outlets in my apartment to GFI if there was anything aquarium related plugged into them. I also use the power strips with the breakers in them. I used to use just the power strip with a breaker alone...until I had a fire that is.

The fire was confined to under the tank but the powerstrip's curcuit didn't trip like it was supposed to. Worst of all I was out of town when it happened. My other pets were subjected to toxic smoke and the firemen had to break the door down to get in to the apartment. I'm still paranoid about power strips but have to use them to run all the tank hardware. But EVERY outlet they are plugged into is a GFI.

 

[nycsicktank]

is the home outlet the same as GFCI?

 

[latino277]

Most Home outlets are NOT GFCI outlets. The GFCI outlets should have a 2 buttons on then. One to test to make sure the outlet work and then the breaker button.

 

[nycsicktank]

i just bought one GFCI today with 20 Amp. im not sure if its okay to connect it with one extension cord which includes everything from my tank.

 

[cybermeez]

I'm not an electrician, but I bet someone here would know the answer. I got a bunch of 15 amp GFI outlets at Home Depot for a very reasonable price. One of them was even a 4 outlet combo. That's what I have everything except my two mag 12 return pumps plugged into a power strip coming from that outlet. Even my 250w MH fixture. Does anyone know how I can figure out how many amps I'm drawing?