Working on an older house that appears to have multiple mods to the electrical. The GFI breaker in the panel doesn’t work properly so the previous owner put receptacle GFIs in the bathrooms. I attempted to put a GFI on the first receptacle on the circuit in the garage (this would be between the panel and the bathroom) and it wouldn’t reset. Any ideas as to why the one wouldn’t work while the others did?
Also I tried two (both failed) and verified the load/line connections both times.
From building boxes and fitting face frames to installing doors and drawers, these techniques could be used for lots of cabinet projects.
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Replies
Usually GFCI problems that do not cause the breaker to trip are caused by a ground to neutral fault down stream. That is not seen by the breaker but it will trip a GFCI. Ceiling boxes are notorious for it since they tend to be junction boxes and are filled to overflowing. Also be sure the ground and neutral are not swapped. That will keep a new GFCI style from resetting.
another common error is that white wires corresponding to different breakers are tied together. Will trip gfi depending on the load balance.
Downstream of the GFCI (whether breaker or outlet) the white and black wires must connect with NO OTHER WIRES from NO OTHER CIRCUIT. Generally if black wires are crossed it's an outright screwup, but it's not terribly unusual (though it is technically a code violation) for the white wires of one circuit to connect with the white wires of another circuit. And occasionally the white is rather foolishly connected to the ground.
The GFCI works by comparing the current in the black wire to the current in the white wire. They must be EXACTLY the same, or the breaker will trip. Any connection between the wires of the GFCI circuit and wires of another circuit will create an "imbalance" and cause the breaker to trip.
I appreciate the response. All of the down stream GFIs work as intended, they will trip and reset. The onlt problem that I have is woth the new one. I would like to put the new one in and remove all the down stream GFIs but with this one being unable to reset I'm at a loss. I would expect (I didn't pull the plate to check) that if there was a mismatch it would not allow these to rest?
The downstream GFCIs presumably do not have any wires connected to their "load"/"line out" sides, so there is no "illegal" connection detected. The problem is with the wiring supplying the GFCIs.
A GFCI outlet typically has two "line in" connections and two "line out" connections. It is the wires (if any) connected to the "line out" connections that must not connect to any other wires from other circuits.