I have a Maytag Centennial gas clothes dryer in my laundry room. It is connected to a non-gfci outlet which is downstream of another outlet with built in gfci. It has been connected like this and working fine since I bought the house two months ago, and presumably has always been connected to this outlet for the 15 years that house has existed.
Tonight we discovered the GFCI outlet tripped and wouldn't stay reset and upon further investigation determined that without the dryer plugged in, everything worked ok but as soon as the dryer was plugged in (even though not turned on), the gfci immediately tripped. If I connect the dryer (via an extension cord), to a GFCI outlet in my kitchen (different circuit), it also trips that one, but if I connect it to a non-GFCI outlet it doesn't trip the breaker and runs fine.
My research on line has brought up posts saying the gas dryers should not be plugged into GFCI outlets at all as they may spuriously trip them, but this dryer has been working in this configuration for 15 years, so I'm guessing something has recently gone wrong with it in the past two days since we used it last.
My question is whether I should be looking into getting a non-gfci outlet installed for the dryer or if I should be looking to get the dryer repaired, and if so is there anything I should look for in the dryer myself rather than call service.
Best Answer
Same problem here: plugging in gas dryer, with dryer off, immediately trips GFCI. GFCI is new; dryer is old. I doubt the "fluctuating current" argument: a washer, with its different cycle starts/stops, is going to generate more "fluctuating current" events than a gas dryer. (Also the dryer is off when I plug it in.) I thoroughly cleaned the inside of the dryer, removing all lint, and brushing dust off of all components. Still trips when plugged in. So I disconnected/isolated hot in the dryer's control panel: still tripped when plugged in. Then I also disconnected/isolated neutral in the dryer control panel: still tripped! New test: without the dryer, ran a test lead from ground in the outlet to the gas pipe connection: trip! Measured a small AC voltage (30mV) between outlet ground and gas pipe. Next step (in this case) is to talk to some people about grounding requirements for gas supply pipes.