Re: Keeping Things Hot (It's a Crock)

Richard Sullivan (richsul@roadrunner.com)
Tue, 06 May 1997 11:39:44 -0600

My wife just bought a new hairdrier and it has a mini GFI built into the
power plug end. It looks like a small dc power supply that you get on lots
of electronic things. It's about the size of a match box for those who
remember matchboxes. This may be the coming trend in safety, built in
GFI's. There are also extension cords with them built in now as well but
they are three times the price of the standard ones and they are the
industrial types not the houshold ones.

Also a note. Any GFI installed upstream on the line is good for all plugs
downstream. You can also get circuit breakers that are GFI'd, they will
handle all outlets on that line. This may be the cheapest way to GFI a
darkroom as the breaker can simply be pulled out and replaced with a GFI
breaker. Mind you these things can be quite a bother as any TV or movie
studio technician can tell you. Any "leaky" device on the line shuts it
down and shuts down everything else on the line. According to my inside
sources, there are lots of "wired around" GFI devices in TV studios.

There was a comment here that it is hard to kill oneself on 120 volts. This
is a very optimistic statement. If everyone who has been killed by 120
volts household current was to rise form the dead it would look like The
Second Coming.

Dick

Bostick & Sullivan
PO Box 16639, Santa Fe
NM 87506
505-474-0890 FAX 505-474-2857