I've got a bit of a puzzler with my Livia.

During a descale, suddenly the GFI on a nearby outlet popped. Not wanting to risk anything, I continued debugging on the same outlet.

So I did some basic debugging, and if I unplugged the heating element from the power relay, I could plug the machine in and turn it on, everything worked. As soon as I plugged the heating element back in, as soon as main power came on (and thus heating element) it popped the GFI.

OK so I've got a bad heating element or I blew it. Took the whole machine apart, pulled the element and wired up 110 directly to the element. Plugged it into THE GFI outlet itself, and it heated right up. On a whim, I plugged the element into the nearby outlet that is on the same circuit as the popping GFI. *Pop*.

Any ideas? I've used this machine on the same outlet for 4 years.

I'm perplexed as to why the element would work on the GFI outlet itself, but not on the outlet next to it.

Pretty much the same thing happened to me recently after descaling my Quickmill Anita. Replacing the heating element fixed it.

That happens a lot -- you are talking milliamp levels of leakages, well within the range of outlet to outlet variations in resistance.

With that in mind, I'm going to take a chance and put it back together with the existing element. Worst case is I lose another week of espresso.

The GFI outlet works as expected if I test/reset it. I was simply resetting that outlet every time the outlet next to it that I was actually using caused it to pop.

If another_jim is correct in saying that milliamps can trip it, then it sort of explains why a nearby outlet would trip it but not the outlet itself. There is going to be slightly more resistance on the further outlet, changing the electrical differential, no?