I'm having trouble with a professional electrician, and I want to make sure that my limited knowledge isn't wrong in challenging what he's telling me.
I had a GFCI in the kitchen that was tripping occasionally, especially with the use of a coffee grinder, but also on its own with nothing on. Under a home warranty plan, an electrician was brought in to fix.
After trying several replacement GFCI outlets, all of which exhibit the same tripping behavior, he looks at my service panel. He sees that the house has a 125A main breaker, and amongst the circuits is a 100A breaker that services the garage.
From this information, the electrician tells me that the GFCI is being "overloaded" (exact wording on work order is "GFI overload to capacity"), and that this is being caused by the 100A circuit.
This seems totally ridiculous to me, for the following reasons:
I understand that GFCIs do not respond to amperage, but to neutral to ground leaks, so the concept of "overload" doesn't even make sense.
NOTHING was powered on the circuit where the GFCI was tripping.
The 100A circuit has nothing at all to do with the circuit where the GFCI is tripping, and the tripping behavior does not change when the 100A breaker is turned off.
Reducing my trust in this contractor even further is the following:
Contractor offered to put a non-GFCI outlet in place of the tripping GFCI outlet in order to get things working again, despite the fact the outlet is in the kitchen.
Contractor completed the service call by wire-nutting together some cables and leaving the open outlet without so much as a cover plate. The entire circuit is now dead, including other outlets that had been working previously.
Contractor suggested adding a new circuit to the house to solve the problem, and offered to do the work off the books.
Please advise, especially in regards to the possibility of what this contractor is telling be about my GFCI being true. The work was done as a service call from a home warranty, and I need to know if I'm within my rights to complain about this service.
Thanks in advance for any help.