Ground Fault
Current escaping its intended path and flowing to ground through something else: a damaged cord, water in a fixture, or a person. The fault GFCIs exist to catch.
In a healthy circuit, every milliamp that leaves on the hot wire comes home on the neutral. A ground fault is the imbalance: current leaking through deteriorated insulation, a wet connection, the metal case of a failing appliance, or a human body completing the path. Small leaks are invisible to breakers, which only care about overload; they are precisely what GFCI devices measure.
Chronic ground faults explain the "GFCI keeps tripping" complaint: an outdoor outlet that trips after rain has water in a box or fitting; a freezer that trips its GFCI monthly has insulation breaking down in the compressor; a circuit that trips the moment of reset has a hard fault. The device is reporting a real leak somewhere, and resetting harder is not a diagnosis.
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- Ground Wire (Equipment Ground) : The bare or green wire that carries no current in normal use.
- Grounding Rod (Grounding Electrode) : The 8-foot copper-clad rod driven into the soil near your meter, connecting your electrical system to the earth itself.
- Bonding : Connecting all the metal parts that could become energized (panels, pipes, pool equipment, gas lines) so they sit at the same voltage and faults trip breakers instead of waiting for a person.
- Ungrounded (Two-Wire) Circuits : Pre-1960s circuits with only hot and neutral, no ground conductor.