Quote:
Originally Posted by mike31154
With respect to a house not being grounded, if you research the subject, adding a GFCI is actually one of the recommended solutions for making a non grounded circuit safer. Since the GFCI senses current differential between the hot and neutral, a ground wire is actually not needed to make it trip. If you are the path from hot to ground/earth, the GFCI will save your bacon even though there is no ground wire in the circuit. Although your house wiring may not have a ground, earth is still there and there is the potential for you to become the path to it.
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Absolutely correct GFCI makes sure the hot and neutral are balanced and will trip when they aren't. The ground wire is negligible in a GFCI setup. I believe that in this situation it would have shut down the system and saved a lot of headaches. The system should have tripped the breaker (any breaker) anyway because the saltwater in the outlet should have overloaded the breaker causing it to trip. The house could be old and still have a fuse panel (often seen in older American houses) and people do stupid things like bypassing the fuse with some metal (pennies) thus they never trip. Breakers aren't perfect either I have seen breakers glow red on a circuit that is shorted out and not tripped. The problem with GFCI is as they age they tend to trip with out enough of a differential. There is no fool proof way to fix this but multiple circuits on seperate GFCI's checked monthly is probably the best.