GFCI and Soldering station

[ggizzy]

Good afternoon,

I purchased a new Stahl soldering iron station yesterday. Up until this point I had been making due with a cheap Radioshack iron until it finally gave out. As I've been increasing my soldering I decided to go with the station instead.

The instructions for the station indicate the station should be plugged into a GFCI for safety reasons. Can anyone elaborate on this and how I might go about doing this. Do I need to rewire the outlet box I use for the soldering iron? Thanks.

 

[dodog]

I would assume that you're not going to be soldering around water and that you won't leave the station unattended. If it's properly built, there should be little worries. I've never had a soldering station plugged into a GFCI and I'm still alive and there was never anything to worry about. Perhaps it's Stahl covering their ass in case someone did something bad with their product. I would say, don't worry about it.

 

[ggizzy]

Thanks for the insight. I imagine you're correct that the company is trying to get in front of any potential liability.

 

[Ken Boyd]

If you do wish to use a GFCI there is no need to rewire the electrical box, just remove the old receptacle and replace it with a GFCI. Or you can always change out the breaker in the panel with a GFCI breaker and that would offer ground fault protection on all of the receptacles on that circuit.

 

[petehall347]

the idea of the breaker is for when something goes wrong or someone does silly things like forget to unplug equipment before soldering ..yes it can happen .. it saves you getting a shock and equipment getting major damage ..
i admit i am a prime example using the iron to heat a cap to test it .. doesn't half make you jump when the power goes off ..
if for some reason the iron went live as in a fault in its circuits and you were leaning on the equipment or holding a bare wire it would save you getting shocked .. breakers are code here and must be fitted for legal reasons .

 

[gadget73]

GFCI breakers are also a lot more expensive than GFCI outlets are. Breakers are code, GFCI breakers are generally only required for water-related things like hot tubs, pools, etc. Outdoor or damp location outlets must be GFCI protected, but you have the option of using a GFCI outlet or doing it with a breaker.

 

[audiojones]

Also a GFCI circuit breaker requires a dedicated neutral to the outlets being protected, so you'd have to find the neutral in the panel that goes to those outlets (and nothing else) and disconnect it from the neutral buss bar then connect it to the GFCI breaker, then connect the neutral from the GFCI circuit breaker to the neutral buss bar.

Much much easier to buy a $14.00 GFCI outlet from Home Despot or Blowes and use it to replace the one you're using, or you can buy a plug-in GFCI protector that you simply plug into the outlet that will provide protection to whatever is plugged into it.

If you are in a basement or garage you should have GFCI protected receptacles throughout anyway. You can wire the outlets downstream of your GFCI receptacle to be protected by it if they are all on the same circuit.

 

[Mr._T]

Regular breakers protect the wires in the branch circuit , and only the wires. GFCI is meant to protect people and sometimes things connected to the circuit. If you can swing it throw one in if you're working on electronics. Being overly cautious around electricity is never a bad thing. Do you really need it? That's up to you.