Does My GE Profile Dishwasher Need to Be Grounded to Operate?

Electrical Requirements

• General Electric in its Profile dishwasher installation instructions warns that safe operation requires grounding. GE advises that you hook up your Profile dishwasher to a three-wire connection consisting of black “hot” wire, white “neutral” wire and green or bare-copper ground wire or use a three-prong grounded plug with a matching grounded electric outlet. The circuit where you connect your Profile dishwasher must provide 120 volt, 60 cycle AC current and be rated for at least 15 amps with 20 amps preferred.

Why Grounding?

• Electricity in a dishwasher comes in through the black hot wire, passes through the device to operate the motors and pumps that wash your dishes and exits to ground through the white neutral wire. But a malfunction or breakdown of the insulation within the dishwasher can allow electricity to escape from the correct path and stray to the outside shell where it waits for an alternate path to ground. If the dishwasher is not grounded, that alternate path can be your body when you touch your dishwasher and experience an electric shock. If you are lucky, you may feel only a little tingle, but you also could get a lethal jolt.

Safe Pathway

• Under normal conditions, no electricity passes through the ground connection. But if an internal fault in the dishwasher allows electricity to stray to the outside, the ground connection will carry the electricity directly to ground. This creates a short circuit that will trip the circuit breaker and cut off power to the dishwasher. If your dishwasher’s circuit breaker keeps tripping, you should unplug the appliance and not use it until it is repaired or replaced.

GFCI Cutoff

• Electric circuits in kitchens and other household areas where electricity and water may hazardously interact must be equipped with a device called a ground fault circuit interrupter, or GFCI, as specified in the National Electrical Code. GFCI devices continually compare the current flowing through the hot and neutral wires of your dishwasher. The flows should be the same, but if they differ, electricity is escaping to ground through some other path and creating a hazard and the GFCI cuts off the current to your dishwasher.