Why Your Electrical Stuff Sometimes Stops Working Until You Push the Magic Red Button

I was once this close to buying an entirely new refrigerator when ours stopped working. As I remember it, we had a power outage during a storm, and everything except the fridge came back online just fine. We couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with the fridge or with the electrical panel in the basement. The thing just didn’t work—damaged by a surge in the storm, perhaps.

Before pulling the trigger on a new purchase, I called my dad to check everything over, just in case we’d missed something, and he found the culprit: The fridge was plugged into a GFCI outlet—the kind with two little rectangular buttons. Pop the little red button back in, and boom, you save yourself 800 bucks (or whatever refrigerators cost these days).

What is a GFCI?

The GFCI, or ground fault circuit interrupter, is a clever little device. They’ve been required in bathroom outlets since the 1970’s, and in kitchens since 2005. According to the International Association of Electrical Inspectors, home electrocutions have dropped by 81% since the pre-GFCI days.

GFCIs mainly exist to keep you from getting shocked to death. Think about those two flat prongs on a plug, say the plug of your hair dryer. The current goes from the one hole in the outlet, through the machinery of the hair dryer, and back down the other prong into the other hole. A GFCI outlet constantly measures the current on both sides, and if it is equal, things are working fine.

But if something happens—you drop that hairdryer into the bathtub—now current is flowing into you. The GFCI detects an imbalance between the two sides of the circuit, and shuts off the power. As the Consumer Product Safety Commission points out, GFCIs “are designed to operate before the electricity can affect your heartbeat.”

A GFCI outlet will have two buttons. One is the “test” button, which triggers the GFCI should you want to do that on purpose; it will shut off the circuit. The other is the “reset” button, which gets everything humming back to life again.

GFCIs are so sensitive they can sometimes trip for other reasons. If a GFCI is tripping repeatedly, call an electrician; there might be something wrong with your home’s wiring. If it’s just a one-off occurrence, it’s OK to hit the reset button and carry on with your life.

That “test” button, by the way? It’s there because you’re supposed to test the GFCI on a regular basis to make sure it’s still working. The recommendation is to test after installation, monthly, and after any power outages.

Where you’ll find GFCIs

Depending on how your house is wired, a circuit in the house might power a single outlet (as is often the case for large appliances like a refrigerator) or it could include the outlets and lights for several rooms.

A single GFCI can be wired to protect the whole circuit. So if your bathroom light won’t turn on or a hallway outlet doesn’t work, start checking the red reset button on any nearby outlets. When you find the right one and pop it back in, everything on the circuit will come back to life.

GFCIs aren’t always in outlets. Some devices, including hair dryers, may have a similar device called an ALCI built into their plug that will cut power to the hair dryer if it drops into water. You can also buy standalone GFCI devices to plug into an extension cord. There are also circuit breakers with a GFCI built in, which means you may have to go find your breaker box (often in a basement or utility closet) to flip that switch. If you suddenly lose power to part of your home, you’ll be checking the circuit breaker anyway.

Some of the outlets that have test and reset buttons are actually AFCIs, or arc fault circuit interrupters. These work a little differently, and their main function is to prevent electrical fires rather than to prevent people from getting shocked. But the buttons work the same way: If they get tripped, you’ll need to hit the “reset” button. If the GFCI or AFCI keeps tripping, even with all devices unplugged from the circuit, call an electrician—there’s probably something wrong with your wiring.

So what’s the button on my garbage disposal?

If you have a garbage disposal, and can’t figure out why it stopped working, you may need to push the reset button on the bottom. It’s typically a round red button attached to what’s called an overload protector.

The overload protector is basically a circuit breaker. It works similarly to the circuit breakers in the breaker box in your home: If there is too much current going through the circuit, the breaker will trip, breaking and thus turning off the circuit. It works differently than a GFCI, but it’s similar in that it cuts power to the device when it detects a problem, and it won’t restore power until you hit that little red reset button.

With a garbage disposal, electrical problems can set off the overload protector, but so can a clog in the disposal. If the motor is turned on but blocked from moving, a high level of current goes through the wires, and the breaker trips. So that little red button is one of the first things to check when you’re troubleshooting a garbage disposal problem.