GeoffM

Is that not the norm then, ie one GFCI protecting downstream sockets? It seems to be the way our house (built in 2000) is wired. I just noticed our main bathroom doesn't have any GFCI sockets, so presumably it is elsewhere in the house.

Is there a safe way of testing GFCI, ie checking it trips without sticking fingers in a downstream socket?

Yorkieabroad

Ours is the same...we have sort of a "head" GFCI that covers a few downstream sockets. I picked up a cheap GFCI tester that you stick in the socket and it gives an array of lights depending on the status of the wiring, and a button on top to test the trip. They were virtually giving them away at harbor freight tools, so not sure how good it is!

Yorkieabroad

Now is a good day to buy in the katy area....Home Depot has them marked at $18 something (-2 for 15A) but they are ringing thru at 58cents. I did the decent thing and queried it, but she called and the guy that runs the electrical aisle said just sell them at what they scan for. Bit of a result, especially as I was buying 6!!

GeoffM

Thanks - and sorry for the thread hijack!

sir_eccles

Had a rental once the sockets stopped working in the bathroom none of which was visibly the GFCI so couldn't find the reset.

Called up the management company who sent a guy round. The GFCI socket for that circuit was on the outside of the opposite side of the house.

Yorkieabroad

That's what ours is like - some of them are logical, mainly the kitchen. The rest of the house and especially the outside seems almost random at times, although I'm sure there must be some method somewhere. As I alluded to earlier, I got so fed up with trying to track them down that I ended up drawing a wiring diagram of sorts, although it resembles nothing so much as a tube map of London!

Yorkieabroad

Thanks for all the replies. FWIW, if the guy in HD knew what he was talking about (he seemed to) he reckoned that:-
- you should match the GFCI to the breaker size - ie if it has a 15A breaker, put a 15A GFCI.
- if you had to have one bigger than the other, he would be more comfortable with a GFCI rated higher than a breaker, rather than the other way round.
- the one that I had (described earlier stamped with 20A GFCI/15A receptacle markings) should be on a circuit with a 15A breaker.

Which is pretty much in line with the broad sentiment from you guys. So thank you!

thinbrit

You can test GFCI outlets, and those downstream, with a very inexpensive tester:
Gardner Bender 120 VAC GFCI Outlet Tester; 1/clam, 5 clams/master-GFI-3501 at The Home Depot
First verify the outlet is wired correctly by examining the lights on the tester, then press the test button, the lights should go off and the GFCI outlet should trip.
I would advise to test the GFCI outlet by using the test button on the outlet itself first.

GFCI outlets can be wired to protect other outlets downstream, but don't have to be. You can even put multiple GFCI outlets on the same circuit (although you wouldn't want them downstream of each other).
A GFCI doesn't necessarily protect all outlets on the circuit. There is nothing to stop someone adding a GFCI somewhere down the physical path of the circuit, in which case all the prior outlets are not GFCI protected, or they may wire the GFCI so the circuit is in parallel with another GFCI protected outlet or regular outlet.

GeoffM

Thanks.

Presumably fitting in to the "pointless" category rather than unsafe or anything?

Some of our sockets aren't really logical. There's no evidence of them being added after construction so I assume they're original. For example, two sockets outside, one at knee level, the other under the eaves, but vertically directly above each other: different supplies. Kitchen/lounge area, four sets of lights, 1-2-4 lights on one supply; the 3rd on another. An outside light switched from nearby but its source is all the way down the other end of the house (I know this because I dug into the unprotected cable *ahem*).

Yorkieabroad

Just to update on a question I originally asked last year on GFCIs on a now closed thread.. It appears GFCIs do have a shelf life. It is not coincidental that this subject has an annual occurrence, coinciding with Chez Yorkie being lit up like Blackpool at a certain time of year

Anyway, I have 12 GFCI circuits that were in the house originally (plus a few later additions). Most of the original ones had got to the point where they were tripping every 1-2 days, with 1 or 2 of them just going about once a week from what I could make out. Having replaced them all with the massively discounted Home Depot models almost 2 weeks ago, I haven't had a single one trip. In doing the replacements I did find some odd things behind the faceplates.....unattached boxes, one was just floating in a hole in the Sheetrock, one had the ground wire unattached just reaffirmed my already poor opinion of build quality round here....

Pulaski

I have had several GFCI sockets "go bad", and I keep a box of spares for when the next one does, because one surely will.

Your experience on ground connections, and wiring in general, doesn't surprise me at all. Americans seem very cavalier about the significance and importance of a ground connection, and in older installations it is often missing entirely, meaning that the cable from the breaker/fuse box doesn't have a wire for a ground connection. Up until the mid 90's clothes dryers didn't have a ground pin at all, just two lives and a neutral. .... Of course it's not like dryers draw much current or are near a water connection, or anything dangerous like that. I helped a neighbour move into a house with a "modern" four-pin socket for the dryer, and his dryer had an old three pin pigtail. He was fascinated as I replaced the pigtail with a four-pin one, carefully drilling a hole in the dryer chassis and securing the pigtail's ground wire with a sheet metal screw. His suggestion had been to replace the socket with a three-pin one, and he watched me like I was practicing witchcraft in his kitchen.

Among the things my in-laws left when they moved out of their house and told us we could take or discard everything they left behind before they sold the house, was an extension cord with the ground pin deliberately broken off, so it would fit in an old-fashioned two pin socket, and an adapter to achieve the same thing, allowing an appliance with a ground pin to be connected to a two pin socket. The adapter I threw away, the extension cord I think I sold for scrap. I wanted neither in my house, nor would I palm them off on anyone else.

To be fair, dumb electrical work is not found only in the US. When I bought my house in London, it came with a 13A socket wired into the upstairs lighting circuit, .... and the socket wiring connections had been used as the connection point for a spur to the water immersion heater (a back-up device as the water was primarily heated by gas). To this day I do not know why using the immersion heater hadn't blown the 5A fuse every time it was used ..... and I discovered this "arrangement" when I put my hand near the socket and noticed it was warm! ...... I immediately discontinued using the immersion heater until I had run a new heavy duty cable from the immersion heater to a new connection in the fuse box.

GeoffM

Rewired a socket with a USB one last night. Found the breaker for the socket in the kitchen was labelled "Bathroom GFCI". Will have to work them all out one day.

S Folinsky

Grounding standards have changed. My house was built in 1939 with steel flex conduit. The steel junction/outlet boxes and the conduits serve as the ground. [we did switch out all the outlets from 1939 vintage non-polarized two prong outlets to modern grounded polarized tree prongs. Testing showed that is was grounded].

When redid our kitchen in 2000, the new LA City Codes required aluminum conduit [or "romex"] and not steel. Also, the required connectors changed from female with a set screw to male. The 220v circuit for an electric range had never been used because kitchen was dual gas/electric and the range was gas. We did reroute the existing 220v to the new wall oven.

Our house was built with what was overkill in 1939 -- a 100 amp service! When we redid the kitchen, we bumped it up to 125 amp which is the most the box could take. Long before we bought the house, the box had been upgraded to breakers ilo fuses. [BTW, the insurance companies will surcharge houses which still have fuses]. We would love to upgrade to a 200 amp services, but the City would make us relocate the box and change out the location of the mains input -- our present set-up is not dangerous, just not up-to-code. Even so, we could not operate both A/C's and the oven since they drew a combined 140 amps. But in our climate, if you were running both L/C's you didn't want to cook.

We replaced the two A/C's two years back since the units were quite old. The modern efficient units brought down the amperage draw a lot so we are now well within the system capacities.

We did this at the same time we totally re-did one of the bathrooms. Since the last major remodel in 2000, the City changed its requirements -- even with metal conduit, a separate green ground wire was required. [Also, one energy efficient light fixture was required and the lights for the lavatory had to be on a motion sensor].

It should be noted that both the grounding wiring and the "neutral" wiring are both wired to earth at the junction box. The main difference is that the grounding circuits should not have to carry current absent an error while the neutral wire will be carrying current. The upshot of this is that the neutral wire CAN operate as a ground. This is one of the reasons why polarized outlets and plugs came into use -- this allows a grounding with only two wires. Also, in the old three-wire 220 v circuits, the neutral doubles as a ground [which is also the reason that only one outlet/or appliance is allowed on such circuits]. My understanding that this was introduced as a means of conserving copper. However, the newer circuits are four wiring.

Final note: buy quality name-brand [e.g. Levitron] GFCI's. They last. Off brand ones are a false economy.

Pulaski

My guess would be that that GFCI is protecting the bathroom sockets. ..... It is IME rare that wiring is so clearly marked, but ideally it should be. It would be easy to form an initial assessment by checking that the bathroom sockets are live then tripping the breaker and seeing if the bathroom sockets are still live. ..... I have two non-adjacent bathrooms (separated by a hallway) that are protected by a single GFCI.

GeoffM

I was referring to the label on the breakers in the electrical cabinet rather than GFCIs. In this case the GFCI is actually in a sensible place, protecting four sockets on the kitchen island (ie GFCI on one socket; three others downstream from it; all on the island).

However I do have two outside sockets directly above each other, one at knee height, the other under the eaves, which are on completely different circuits and GFCIs - and doubt they can be anything other than original, given the stucco they're buried in.

I have since ascertained we have approximately 114 individual sockets in this house - ones that I know of anyway! Back in the UK I think I had about 34.