GFI is trippin'

[Andy B.]

Weird situation and I'm not sure if I can do anything about - may need a pro - but figured I'd pose the question here to see if anyone could assist.

I have several GFI outlets in my garage. One of them has been known to trip on occasion and I never really paid much attention to it. I never use that outlet so I would just occasionally see the orange light on and go over and push the reset button and all would be good.

However, my cable TV went out recently and I could not get it fixed until I remembered that I installed a cable booster that needs to be plugged in and I went to the garage and saw the GFI outlet was tripped again and that seemed to cut power to the GFI outlet that had the booster plugged into it.

So, now this annoyance needs to be fixed -- is there anything I can do myself to check why the GFI keeps getting tripped or do I need an electrician? Could it be the outlet itself - so I could just get a new one and replace it? I've changed outlets and fixtures before so I can do that, I'm just not sure about GFI issues.

Thanks for your help.

[Brian Levredge]

The cheapest and best solution is to install a new GFI. Like regular outlets and switches they go bad or are defective sometimes. You could actually just put in a regular outlet instead.