As professionals in the refrigerator business, we’re always learning something new. Sometimes the lessons come when we least expect them. Last week, we learned a really important lesson that is going to help us give our customers better service. We thought we should pass it on to you so you can avoid an unnecessary service call.
We’re buying a new home. We are so excited! We’ve been eagerly watching each step in the construction process, and of course we wanted to know how the house was going to be wired so we could make sure our appliances all worked as best as possible.
A few days ago we were doing an electrical walkthrough, and everything was checking out great until we got to the garage. We told our electrician that we wanted a non-GFCI outlet in the garage for our upright freezer, but he told us he couldn’t install a non-GFCI outlet!
Why do we want a non-GFCI outlet?
Put simply, you can’t plug a refrigerator or a freezer into a GFCI outlet. GFCI outlets can’t handle the load, so the refrigerator will trip the outlet. You might not even know that your refrigerator isn’t getting power until all the food is warm and spoiled. Then, of course, you think your refrigerator is broken.
So why can’t we get a non-GFCI outlet in our garage?
Our electrician told us that since 2008 you cannot have a non-GFCI outlet in your garage. In an out-of-the-way place like a garage, it is less likely to notice when something is going wrong with an outlet until there’s a major problem, such as a house fire. As a result, GFCI outlets were made mandatory as a safety measure.
Non-GFCI outlets are a safety hazard when they are installed in garages, so it is definitely better for them not to allow them in garages, but it does cause quite a bit of inconvenience when it comes to plugging in a refrigerator!
If you have been having problems with your garage refrigerator, it might be because the refrigerator is tripping the GFCI breaker.
If your garage refrigerator is not working, the first thing you should check is the GFCI breaker. You might be able to save a lot of money and frustration on a service call for a refrigerator that doesn’t actually have anything wrong with it at all!
Rick
August 21, 2017 6:57 pmA couple of things. Circuit Breakers are effective at preventing overloads and fires. GFCI outlets are for protecting against shocks to people, which a regular circuit breaker is not very effective.
Circuit Breaker pop when the max current for the load is exceeded, its exceeding the max current of the circuit is what causes fires. A 15 amp circuit breaker still leaves a lot of current to produce a bad, if not deadly, shock for a person under the right conditions.
A GFCI outlet compares outgoing and returning current from the outlet, if it sees a difference, it will pop killing the circuit. So if someone was being shocked by the circuit, the GFCI would recognize the loss of current going to someone’s body instead returning through the circuit. The problem with that is heavy loads like Freezers/Refrigerators (usually only momentarily during compressor startup, they’re pretty efficient most of the time) will cause slightly less current to return on the circuit then output, only for a moment, but it will cause the GFCI to pop.
The garage is a place where there could be moisture, puddles and other shock hazards, so GFCI outlets make sense.
While GFCI outlets in the garage are without a doubt safer than non-GFCI outlets, but to call them a hazard is a little much, people have had non-GFCI outlets in garages for a hundred years before the change in code. Sure there may have been a few accidents out of millions, but they weren’t considered hazardous then, but suddenly they’ve become hazardous now?
One option is to have your electrician install a GFCI outlet on a single dedicated circuit in the garage in a location for the Freezer/Refrigerator. Of course it won’t work with your Freezer/Refrigerator. But you can easily install a regular outlet in its place. For better safety, pick a single outlet, not the typical double outlet, and pick a warning color like red or orange, with a wall plate of the same color. Then label the outlet, a decal made on your printer or just write on the wall plate with a sharpie, a warning this outlet is “Non-GFCI, for Refrigerator/Freezer Only”. A single outlet is safer than the double, simply because the Refrigerator/Freezer will use up all available outlets and thus no one will be tempted to plug something into the open 2nd outlet of the typical double. This is what I did in my home (that was new enough to fall under the code), and when we sold it, it was inspected twice and both times the inspectors never said a word about the one clearly labeled Non-GFCI outlet in the Garage. And it may be different because we are in different states with different codes/standards, but it may also be a very common thing in many homes today, and when the inspector saw there was one exception for a Refrigerator/Freezer that had several precautions, and figured it didn’t have to be removed.
Oh, there is an exception in the code for Refrigerators in the Kitchen. You can have a single dedicated circuit placed for the refrigerator only, that is NOT GFCI protected. You’d think they would have the same exception for the garage, since garage refrigerators/freezers are so popular. And perhaps there is some states but not others.
Scootz
February 24, 2019 10:09 amNo offense to Rick, but I would not agree with his advice (despite the extra thought he put into the separate circuit idea). Here’s why:
* NEC 2011 REQUIRES GFCI for fridges. As always, pre-existing installations are exempt, but the point is that nuisance trips are not a thing anymore with new equipment.
* You CAN NOT go backwards with code – ever. While your home IS your castle, there are insurance coverage reasons not to attempt this. Also, authorities could take a dim view (think of first responders).
* It’s true that an OLD fridge may nuisance trip GFCI. Often what people stick in garages are the old fridge, so this is where a lot of the common wisdom comes from..
* ANY new fridge that trips GFCI needs to be repaired. a 5ma current leak might not shock you (or reach a place where it can) but it’s still a current leak that the designs do not allow for. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/electricians/comments/53hyxk/fridge_tripping_on_gfci/
* The separate circuit is still a good idea: it will minimize the risk of other things tripping the fridge.
Lastly, not code related but if you’re worried about knowing when a circuit trips, you can get hardware that will tell you when power is lost. A good UPS backup would do this (assuming a computer were hooked up, it could send an email to your phone’s SMS for example). You wouldn’t power the fridge directly through the UPS unless it is rated for such things – you just want the UPS to be able to notify you. They probably make “Internet of things ” devices now that could react to power loss, without the baggage of having a UPS around.