From time to time, I get a call from someone who tells me that their smoker works just fine when they plug it into a regular electrical outlet but if they plug it into a GFI outlet it trips shortly after they turn it on. At first, I didn’t understand why this would happen; I just knew that if I sent them a new heating element, that would almost always take care of the problem. After doing a little research, I believe I now understand what is happening and this week I would like to share what I learned.

When a circuit is functioning normally, the current flows into an appliance through the power wire and all of it flows out through the nuetral wire. Ground Fault Interrupters (GFIs) are designed to protect us from electrical shock by turning off a household circut when there is a difference of 5 milliamperes in the current between the power and nuetral wires. A typical circut breaker trips at 20 amps, so at .005 amps, you can see how sensitive a GFI is.

The second part of the equation is the heating element. If you were to cut our element in half, you would see a wire surrounded by ceramic encased in a metal jacket. Here is the way it works – as electrical current goes through the wire in the middle, it encounters resistance thus creating heat. The ceramic surrounding this wire not only insulates the middle wire from the outside jacket but is a very good conductor of this heat, making it possible to cook quite efficiently inside your oven.

A problem can develop with the GFI when a crack appears in the ceramic allowing a small amount of current to leak from the wire in the middle of the element to the outside jacket. On a regular circut, you probably would never know that this was happening, but, because of the great sensitivity of the detection of current passing through them, GFIs will trip.

So; should we all go and rip out all our GFIs? Absolutely not. They are a necessary safety precaution in bathrooms and around pools, etc, but they also can, at times, give the Backyard Chef headaches when he has an oven full of brisket.  For that reason alone, I encourage everyone to use a regular outlet (non-GFI) when using your oven because of the possibilty of nuisance tripping, but I realize that in some instances this is not possible. If this happens to you, give us a call here at Cookshack (800) 423-0698 and we will get you cooking again.