Wouldn't be the first time! (-;
Well, thanks anyway for the remote post-mortem. Always good to know what's up when something fails.
That's bound to have an effect on the post-mortem analysis. Is it possible it got fried in a surge and what you smelled was "reheated leftovers?" At least when that happens you can say to yourself: "Now it's REALLY dead." Sometime's that a good thing because it keeps you from wasting time trying to track down a problem that can't be readily solved.
Bugs still get my vote when it comes to getting in where they don't belong and causing the failure of outside equipment. I even had wasps "extend" the engine of my Volvo 142. The began building their mud nest by following the contours of the front of the engine block, which they did with remarkable detail. When I opened the hood of this very rarely used vehicle it looked like the front of the engine was made out of mud.
Now I agree that an old 4 cylinder Volvo engine is pretty damn easy for bugs to access - a lot easier than an external GFCI - but it still impresses me to this day how they just took a human fabrication and extended it. It took a while to figure out what happened because my first thought was "how did all that mud get on the engine." And then "how did it get so precisely patterned? And finally, HOLY GOD THERE ARE WASPS FLYING OUT IT AND RIGHT TOWARDS ME!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mine were, but as I noted, outdoor boxes (and outlets) vary greatly in their protection against intrusion and most will allow intrusion in a strong rain if there's anything plugged into the outlet.
That's surprising. From what I've read about GFCI's they operate electrically and not mechanically which is what IMHO a spring implies. I always *hated* it when springs went a poppin' when trying to repair something, especially something that you didn't expect to be spring loaded.
Then there's always the repair that somehow winds up with a screw left over. I don't feel as bad about that since God/Nature has the same problem with leftover parts:
"A dermoid cyst is a teratoma of a cystic nature that contains an array of developmentally mature, solid tissues. It frequently consists of skin, hair follicles, and sweat glands, while other commonly found components include clumps of long hair, pockets of sebum, blood, fat, bone, nails, teeth, eyes, cartilage, and thyroid tissue." . . . "Such is the case of Canadian Football League linebacker Tyrone Jones, whose teratoma was discovered when he blew a tooth out of his nose."
Ditto. Places like Amazon have had a pretty serious effect on local small parts vendors in my area. They are even implicated in the recent business troubles of Radio Shack.
The retail price range of your external GFCI is pretty impressive though.
companies that specialize in breakers. There were four. But calling all
Ever get locked out? I think there's only one locksmith in the area and he lists under 20 different names. A real giveaway in the Yellow Pages listings is the lack of a mailing/street address.