Skip to content

Troubleshooting

The fault is in the wall

Nothing plugged in, and it still trips. The current is leaving somewhere between the device's LOAD terminals and the last box on the run.

Moisture

The most common cause. An outdoor box whose in-use cover was left open, a receptacle behind a leaking sink, a garage box that floods, a crawl-space junction. Water across the terminals leaks a few milliamps to the grounded box, and 5 mA is the limit. Open the downstream boxes (power off) and look for corrosion and damp.

A damaged cable

A nail or screw through a cable, a staple driven too hard, a rodent chew: the insulation is compromised and the hot leaks to the ground conductor or the box. It may trip only in humid weather. An electrician's insulation tester finds it; you can narrow the run by disconnecting the cable at each box in turn.

A shared neutral

If a neutral from another circuit is tied into this one downstream — a handyman's "spare white wire" — the returning current on this GFCI's neutral no longer matches its hot and it trips as soon as the other circuit carries load. Multiwire branch circuits (two hots sharing a neutral) must be fed by a two-pole GFCI breaker for the same reason.

A hidden load

Something is plugged in that you did not count: a hard-wired garage-door opener, a doorbell transformer, an outdoor light with a wet fixture, a well pump. Each is a candidate.

The device itself

Last on the list because it is least likely with a device that resets and then trips again after a while. Disconnect the LOAD conductors: if it now holds indefinitely, the fault is downstream; if it trips with nothing on LOAD, replace the device.

Method

Work from the device outward: LOAD disconnected → holds? Reconnect LOAD, disconnect at the first downstream box → holds? Move one box further each time. The trip returns at the box where the fault lives.