GFCI GCFI CGFI... Whatever. They may save your life someday, but they're friggin annoying.
A Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter outlet became the bane of my existence for a bit last week. It all started when my daughter came to me with a dead hair dryer. "It just stopped." she said. I hauled myself up to my feet and determined that the GFCI outlet in our master bathroom had tripped. That outlet is connected to the kid's bathroom and therefore no hairdryer. I reset the outlet and went back to blissfully trolling Reddit.
About 2 minutes later she came back saying that the hair dryer stopped again. with a sigh I instructed her to be careful not to plug anything else into the outlet and went to reset it again.
No dice. It would not reset. Ugh. I sent her to an outlet in her room to finish up her hair while I started hunting for that GFCI outlet that I bought last year, but never ended up using.
I am pleased to report that I located the outlet without even trying hard (those who know me will understand how impressive this feat is.) I grabbed a couple of screw drivers and a pair of needle nose pliers and went to work.
At this point I feel like I should pause to tell you that it took me over a week to get the outlet working again. By the end I was so frustrated I wanted to climb up on the roof and refuse to come down until someone explained to me why I was so ridiculously lame that I couldn't connect 5 wires to 5 screws correctly.
The outlet that I removed was configured differently than the new one but both outlets were clearly marked with "Line" and "Load" so it should not have required any critical thinking skills to replace. Whew! I took a quick photo of the configuration of the old outlet to serve as a reminder and labeled the wires with a sharpie for good measure. Then I removed the wires one by one as I wired up the new outlet according to the line and load markings etched onto it. I even took great pride in going old school and wrapping the wires around the screws rather than take the shortcut method because I Huckleberry Hotbody am no slouch!
-Yes OSHA. I shut off the power at the breaker and confirmed that the power was off with a multi-meter before monkeying with anything. I have been bitten by the angry pixies before and didn't develop any super powers so why bother trying again?)
I flipped the breaker back on and went in to test the outlet... It had a little red light on the bottom that was blinking red, but other than that - It didn't power up my sophisticated outlet testing equipment (bedside lamp). I was perplexed! It took an embarrassingly long time for me to remember that it might be a good idea to press the reset button on the switch to activate it. Eureka! That's the problem! Nope. It wasn't! Grr!
I immediately assumed that I had somehow gotten the wires turned around as switched from the old wiring configuration to the new one. The old outlet had the line on the bottom and the load on top. The new one had line on top and load on the bottom. Seems simple, but I'm well known to be quite capable of playing the moron role when asserting my manly household repair persona. I did find it odd that that the little red light would manage to blink if I had wired the outlet up backwards, but I am always willing to believe in my own ability to screw up repair jobs so I snapped another pic of the new configuration and pulled the outlet off to get a better look at things.
All signs pointed to me having wired the stupid thing correctly in the first place! Mmpf. At this point my wife came to me to complain about the internet being down. It was getting late and rebooting a router sounded like a much more satisfying project to me at that point, so I abandoned my GCFI woes and went on to the new project.
The next day I went in search of training. Good morning YouTube! Ugh! The internet is still down!? Boo! Way to suck Comcast! I was looking up Comcast's connection status on my phone when it occurred to me... maybe my rogue GFCI outlet was protecting an outlet that served some vital part of my internet connection equipment. I went on a hunt and found the culprit. An outlet in my garage was on the same circuit and my cable signal booster had no power. I moved it to another outlet and voila Internet restored! Hooray!
So Mainly I was looking to learn how to confirm which wires were "line" wires and which ones were "load" wires. I could find the hot line wire easily enough. it is the one with mains power flowing into it. The others were less obvious.
After way too many YouTube videos failed to tell me this information I got frustrated and gave it a rest. It was not until that evening after work that I tried again. Just as I was getting into a promising video my wife informed me that the ice cream in the garage refrigerator was feeling a little soft.
Yep! You guessed it. The garage refrigerator was plugged into the same outlet as the cable amplifier! Why didn't I re-route the refrigerator plug to a working outlet while I was re-routing the amplifier? I CAN CLEARLY ONLY SOLVE ONE DAMN PROBLEM AT A TIME! ...So yes. I am stupid. We got the fridge working and I went back to trouble shooting.
Ultimately I discovered that the line and load wires are grouped in the outlet box together. No surprise there. Problem is - that information just served to confirm that I had once again wired the outlet properly in the first place.
Next I deliberately wired the outlet wrong to see what would happen.
OSHA - Please be quiet! I'd like to say that I was being careful but mostly I was just frustrated and made a wildly unwise decision that may have burned my house down. I am aware of my own stupidity. People like me should not be allowed within 20 feet of home repair work. I know I know! The point is that nothing happened and I successfully eliminated another variable.
At this point I decided it was time to troubleshoot the outlet itself. it was brand new in box, but maybe it was a dud. I gathered up my son and we ventured to the home depot. The home depot is fun for little boys. I always try to take him whenever I go there. He was massively entertained by the wall of light switches while I deliberated on whether or not to buy the $40 quality outlet or stick with the $15 cheapass one. Cheap prevailed as usual and we went home with an outlet for me and the afterglow from the unfettered access to a wall of switches for my boy. It was satisfying on different levels for both of us.
I wired the new switch exactly as I had wired up the first "new" switch except that I abandoned the pretentious old school screw wrapping technique and just used the shortcut method. I have my limits.
it worked fine.
AAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaaaaAAaaaaa!
I need a nap now.
-HH
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