1

Recently moved into the house. About half of it has ungrounded outlets. Trying to replace them with GFCIs for some increased safety.

This outlet in the living room is giving me trouble. On Friday I hooked it up as shown in the picture. The black hot wire and the brown neutral wire connected to the line side and the other 4 wires on their respective load sides. All the outlets including this one in the living room worked after that for about an hour. They randomly shut off. I was able to reset this one which made the rest in the room turn back on. I woke up the next day and they were off again. This time though, resetting them did not work. So now none of the outlets in the room work. Any idea what happened here or what I can do about it?

enter image description here   enter image description here

enter image description here

Improve this question
6
  • 2
    Neutral wires are only to be white or grey, not any other colour. What you call brown should be a hot wire, but an odd colour.
    – crip659
    Commented Sep 25, 2022 at 17:02
  • 1
    Do you have a voltmeter?
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Commented Sep 25, 2022 at 17:03
  • Double check the wires. People do make mistakes, or just don't care about wire colours. Might have had needed a neutral wire, but only had brown handy(big doo-doo). Neutral and hot should give a ~120 volts with a meter. Neutral and ground should read 0 volts.
    – crip659
    Commented Sep 25, 2022 at 17:28
  • 1
    Are you installing GFCI receptacles at every outlet you want protected... or only certain ones? You say you are putting some wires on the LOAD terminals. Why are you doing that? What is guiding your choice there?
    – Harper - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Sep 25, 2022 at 18:43
  • I have a voltmeter and confirmed that the brown and black that I have in the line of the outlet are giving me 120v. Interestingly, the hot with one of the whites gives me ~80 volts
    – Ryan Maurer
    Commented Sep 26, 2022 at 22:22

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Make sure you understand the difference between 406.4(D)(2)(b) and 406.4(D)(2)(c) in the NEC. If you are connecting more than one GFCI according to 406.4(D)(2)(b) and used the load side to connect them to each other, those multiple GFCIs will not work as expected.

It is very likely that you only need one GFCI per circuit. Also note the language of 406.4(D)(2)(c) does not require the type of receptacle depicted in your photos if you simply replace the circuit breaker with a GFCI or dual function AFCI/GFCI type.

GFCI trips are caused by faults in the connected load, whether it's a plug connection or a screwed on connection to another outlet. Removing all loads will prevent the GFCI trip. Likewise, removing one load at a time will help isolate the problem.

The original question did not describe any connected loads, nor whether anything was plugged in when the GFCI tripped, so there isn't any more specific way to respond at this point.

Improve this answer
2
  • Thanks for your response Robert. There are no other outlets that share a breaker with this one that have load wires. Nothing was plugged in to any of the outlets during this.
    – Ryan Maurer
    Commented Sep 26, 2022 at 22:21
  • 1
    @RyanMaurer You still haven't said anything about those load wires, and from a photo of a receptacle I can't help determine what kind of fault you have on those wires.
    – Robert Chapin
    Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 0:10

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.