Plugging in the hair dryer to dry my kid’s hair, I barefootedly noticed the floor was damp. Not wet; damp. Barely. I wasn’t standing in a puddle, it was like maybe a not-so-dry towel had been laid on it and picked up. Barely damp.
I flip on the hair dryer and nothing. Huh. Looks like the GFCI had tripped. Clicked the button, stood on the dry bathmat, and the hair dryer worked.
As for my question, see the title.
If you were sitting in the bath, and had the drier in your hand. you might have dropped it into the bath and really electrified the bath…
Otherwise you would have just thrown the hair drier out of your hand. What happens (I have touched 240 volts) is that the muscles of your arm tense up, and the larger muscles win… Your hand flicks up toward your face.
Yes, the GFCI tripped, apparently fast enough that you didn’t even notice a shock from the leaking current. Worked like it should.
Save your life? Well, maybe.
But it isn’t like every electrical shock kills someone. Most of us have been shocked over our lifetime, without dying.
Electricity generally tends to kill you in one of two ways.
The first way is that it literally cooks you to death. If you take two nails and insert them in either side of a hot dog, then take an electrical cord and attach one wire to each nail and plug it in, you’ll cook the hot dog in a surprisingly short amount of time (note - don’t try this experiment at home unless you know how to protect yourself from getting shocked and killed while doing so). The electric chair cooks you to death. Lightning strikes cook you to death. Touching a high voltage power line cooks you to death. It takes a lot of current to cook you, but if you have a lot of current then damage from it is fairly consistent. No one survives the electric chair unless it malfunctions. Lightning may not always kill you, but survivors often end up with very bad burn injuries requiring lengthy hospital stays for recovery.
The second way that electricity kills you is by screwing up your heartbeat. Our hearts have a funny design that if you manage to get their rhythm out of whack they will stay that way. They go into what is called “fibrillation” where instead of beating in a nice normal beat the heart just sits there and shakes somewhat chaotically. Since the heart is no longer effectively pumping blood, you pass out and eventually die. A portable defibrillator can shock the heart back into a normal rhythm. Otherwise it’s not likely to recover on its own. It takes a surprisingly small amount of current to screw up your heartbeat. The general safety level used in U.S. standards is 5 mA. Anything below that is considered “safe” and anything above that is considered dangerous. You can barely feel 5 mA. If you aren’t familiar with current, that’s 0.005 amps and your typical wall outlet is capable of supplying 15 amps, if that helps to put it in perspective. It’s a very small amount of current. The thing is, even though these small currents can screw up your heart, whether or not it does so is very hit and miss. Your heart is more sensitive to getting knocked into fibrillation during certain parts of its cycle and is much less sensitive during other parts of its cycle. Hit it just right at the right time and it is much more likely to go into fibrillation.
Your GFCI prevented the second type of shock from occurring. Would it have killed you? Maybe, but probably not. But the chance of death if the GFCI hadn’t been there wasn’t zero.
This is incorrect.
First of all, when you drop something electrical into water, the entire water does not become “electrified”. That’s a Hollywood myth. What you end up with are voltage gradients through the water. The water isn’t safe to touch because of the low level shock hazard, but you aren’t guaranteed to die if you touch the water.
Second, while you are most likely to just throw the hair dryer, it’s also possible that you could hang onto it and it’s also possible that your heart could go into fibrillation. As I said above, the chance of death is pretty hit and miss, but it’s definitely incorrect to say that all that will ever happen is that you’ll let go of the hair dryer.
My Guess: There’s nothing on the outside of the hairdryer that’s conductive and the GFCI was already tripped for some other reason. If it tripped because of what you did, you would have heard it click. If you go there now and click the “TEST” button, you’ll hear a ‘snap’ when you do it. That’s the sound it’ll make when it trips.
If you honestly think it saved your life, that is, if you really think current traveled from the wall, through the dryer, into your body and to the earth you need to throw away your hair dryer because there’s a short to ground inside it somewhere that’s leaking current to one of the screws that your hand touched. If that’s the case, the hair dryer isn’t safe to use anymore and needs to be replaced before someone get’s hurt.
But I don’t think that’s the case, I think the TEST button on the outlet got bumped. Either someone in the house was playing with it or you bumped it plugging in the hair dryer.
If it was me, I wouldn’t give it much thought.
But, just to reiterate. If cleaning up the water you were standing in fixed the problem, that would mean that using the hairdryer is sending electricity through your body. If the water was the issue…you need to be worried about what happens if someone uses that dryer at a non-GFCI outlet. You don’t have to be standing in water to get a shock.
Ah, but what if the “something” is a tape player with “White Rabbit” playing at maximum volume while you are tripping on acid and mescaline while in the tub?
I would say Joey has hit right on the nail.
No. You can use a hair dryer while almost completely emerged in a bathtub without getting electrocuted as long as the electrical part of the dryer is not touching the water.
That took me a second to understand.
For clarification, I think that needs to be slightly rewritten…
You can use a hair dryer while you almost completely emerged in a bathtub without getting electrocuted as long as the blow dryer itself is not touching the water.
I read that as the blow dryer can be submerged as long as the electrical part of the dryer doesn’t get wet. While theoretically true, it would be pretty hard to accomplish.
Either way, it’s not a good idea because of the risk of dropping the dryer into the tub.
Go ask Alice. I think she’ll know.
who knows if you would have died.
from your description the GFCI prevented you from getting a shock.
the voltage was there to provide a potential to get shocked. things like bare feet, damp floor (maybe also damp hands, damp air, hair and dust in dryer) would help provide a path for electrical current to take.
the shock potential is there dry or wet or damp. dampness, wet, skin contact and whatever give the current a path to flow.
it is good to minimize skin contact with things other than the appliance. it is good to not contact things that would provide a current path (plumbing fixtures, sinks, tubs, concrete, dirt, moisture). it is good to keep appliances in good condition and clean (free of dust, dirt, grime, hair).
+1
Did you hear a click at the GFCI when you turned on the blow dryer? If so, then the dryer most likely tripped it. It’s a pretty distinct sound, but you’d have to decide whether it’s likely it would happen and you would have missed it. (Click the TEST button: that’s the sound.)
Does your blow dryer have a plastic handle, as most do? Were you touching any metal on the blow dryer? You generally can’t trip a GFCI (or get zapped, at 110V) though plastic.
I have a hard time believing that a GFC outlet would have been tripped in the situation outlined by the OP. Just standing in dampness while using an electrical appliance plugged into one of those outlets?
:dubious:
ETA: in other words, I think it tripped out because it was a blow dryer and drew a lot of current/amperage while something else was also drawing the same on the same circuit. Not because of damp feet. I’m prepared to be shown I’m an idiot and wrong.
GFI outlets trip due to leakage - the current flowing through the hot and neutral are not balanced. They do not trip due to an overcurrent condition, the circuit breaker would tip instead.
I’m gonna have to go with Joey P and Learjeff on this one.
I seriously doubt that the situation you described caused the GFCI to ‘trip’. :dubious:
I may be behind the times with this but any GFCI that I have encountered has to be manually reset after it has been tripped.
What if it eats, shoots, and leaves?
Yes, what I meant was, it doesn’t matter how wet you are, unless the electrical appliance also gets wet, and even then it has to be wet on the electrical part.