Is Your Family Protected?

When I do a home inspection one of the first things that catches my immediate attention is a home without GFCI protected outlets. A GFCI other wise known, as a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter is an outlet designed to protect you against electrical shock in wet locations. Areas such as your bathroom, your kitchen sink, your garage, your crawlspace and even outside your house.

Lets say you're in the bathroom using a blow dryer on your hair. You put the hair dryer down and it some how falls into the sink. The GFCI will automatically turn off the power and protect you from being shocked or in the worse case electrocuted.

Receptacle GFCI outlets can be installed in place of the standard duplex receptacle found in the house. They fit in the standard outlet box and will protect you against ground faults from any electrical appliance plugged into that outlet. In many case the outlet can be installed so that it will also protect other electrical outlets further "down stream" in the branch circuit.