GFCI question
Our Dometic refrigerator is popping GFCI breakers when it runs on 120 volts. I pulled the heating element and it has three leads, one of which is the ground. Connecting these directly to a GFCI circ...
Forum Discussion
danwelch wrote:
I suppose it could be a very minimal ground fault. I know the GFCI breaker is supposed to trip at 5 mA, but using ohms law, (Volts = Amps x ohms) at 110V and .005A a resistance of 22,000 ohms could trip it. I don't know what the specs on my Fluke meter is but perhaps at 22,000 ohms it reads "infinite"? That is the only explanation that makes any sense to me. In any case, I'll have it replaced when the part arrives and we'll see what happens.
Your fluke can easily (and accurately) measure 22 kOhms. This is not a particularly high resistance value for electronics. The top range on my Fluke can measure 22 MOhms, or a thousand times that resistance. I suspect you can't detect it because the fault is not a purely ohmic fault—that is, the current it conducts is not a linear function of voltage. Not everything follows Ohm's law.
