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wayne_lobb

Fisher-Paykel fridge trips GFCI outlets

Wayne
4 years ago

We bought a Fisher-Paykel (F-P) refrigerator new 6+ years ago. It worked fine in our old 1950s house. We demolished the old house and rebuilt from scratch. Now, when we plug the F-P into a GFCI outlet in our unfinished garage, it keeps tripping the outlet; the same happened when we wired to a non-GFCI outlet on the same circuit. This circuit includes the garage door opener. We rewired the F-P to a a GFCI outlet on a completely different circuit, out on the porch, and the same tripping occurred. Both times we lost food because the tripping happened overnight.


An electrician suggested that certain electronics in the New-Zealand-designed F-P fridge might not be compatible with US GFCI outlets. He suggested that some kind of buffer device might be wired between the fridge and the GFCI to prevent tripping.


Later, we found that Fisher-Paykel specifically warns that their refrigerators should not be plugged into GFCI outlets because of the likelihood of tripping these outlets.


Any ideas about a buffer device between the fridge and the GFCI-equipped circuit? Can separation be accomplished? Is presence of GFCI anywhere on the circuit, even on the other side of some buffer device, enough to cause tripping? Sharing the circuit with the garage door opener does not seem to be the root cause, since the same tripping occurred on the porch circuit, which is not shared with any other device.


Thank you for any information.

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