Did GFCI Receptacles Change Without Us knowing?

I had a friend who has a 10 yr old pretty high price home. In one upstairs bathroom the outlet was wired to a GFCI in the garage. I had to help him find it . Crazy what the did ,. great video. Thanks

I recently did a kitchen remodel on my home that was built in the 1960s. I ran a separate circuit for every plug in and have a GFCI. I used a tester like you showed to test each circuit as it was completed. 1 of the new GFCI outlets was defective right out of the box. It showed with a red led, couldn't be reset and was always live. I replaced it immediately. Big upgrade from 1960s wiring. Also installed a new 200 amp service entrance to replace the original 100 amp. Thank you for the video. It is good to know that I did everything correctly.

Thank you for sharing. As a home inspector I encounter both self testing and non self testing GFCI receptacles. I also routinely see GFCI receptacles that either wont trip or will not reset after tripping. Periodically testing GFCI protected receptacles is the prudent course of action.

Really appreciate the detailed Video. I have a few GFCI outlets in my house, so I'll use this method & test them more often. 🧑🏿‍🔧

I only found out about self-testing GFCI's recently while updating the outlets in my home for aesthetic reasons. I had taken note of which side was line and which side was load, and even noted that the new GFCI was upside down compared to the old one in that regard. Yet I still managed to initially wire it backwards. The self test was able to let me know that which was nice!

Lots of comments about never having had a GFCI outlet fail: I've had at least two in our house. One was in a half-bath, and it just didn't work reliably when I tried to use it. My outlet tester showed a fault (I don't remember exactly what the light code was, but I think it indicated ground/neutral miswire). It was wired correctly, but apparently had an internal failure. The other GFCI that failed was in the garage where our Internet equipment plugged in (the ONT for fiber-optic), and it just tripped frequently for no good reason. Replacing it eliminated all the random trips.

I really appreciate the information you provided in this video👍

I had early GFCI receptacles in my grounded home that would false trip when an appliance was initially plugged into them. After plugging the device in I could press the reset button and everything was fine. I narrowed it down to capacitive and inductive loads. Like rechargeable shavers. The small in-rush current these devices drew caused the GFCI to assume a fault because more current was going in on the hot side, versus how much was exiting on the neutral side. Replacing these with newer GFCI devices solved the false tripping issues.

Great discussion. Just about all one needs to know. Thank you.

Another great video. Thank you again!

While at one of our great 8 yearly IAEI meetings/ continuing education class they told us that when UL labs tested hundrrds of GFCI devices they were disappointed in how many either were not working or would not trip. This helped to have manufacturors to make all GFCI receptacles but not more expensive GFCI circuit breakers to have the automatic test function & miswired ones to not be anle to energize. The shelve test is not 100% gool proof because it does not open the relay contact so you still must perform monthly push test button to make sure it's working.

In the Chicagoland market it's easy to tell what the load side wires are. The standard is purple hot and gray neutral. Of course you probably have to learn how to bend EMT for wiring your house first.

Though not exactly the same thing, but we replaced our toaster a couple years ago, and the new one will not allow you to push down the handle to lower the mechanism unless the toaster is plugged in and energized. My brother is a retired electrician, and I am a retired pipefitter, and we have discussions about various issues of our trades regularly. He is the super for a elder apartment complex in Vancouver, Wa, and I live here in Pa, so we talk about things he finds all the time. It is an older complex, and the various problems that he finds are often due to either a lack of codes or simply that the codes used during construction were just poor. Thanks for the info.

There is one thing to be aware of if using the plug-in GFCI tester. A GFCI receptacle is permitted to replace an old, 2-prong (i.e. no ground hole) receptacle. When used for that, it's supposed to have a sticker placed on it that states "No Equipment Ground," since there's no ground wire in the box. The self test button will still work when wired this way; however, the plug-in tester will not. The plug-in tester works by shorting the hot to ground and since there's no ground wire to short to, nothing will happen.

There are some "smart GFCIs" that count trips and can lockout resets when the GFCI is in danger of failing mechanically caused by too many open-close operating cycles. These devices do not count tests, where you push the test button on the GFCI device, but they do count trips caused by pushing the button on the circuit tester.

I like that little LED but I have found with those I have outdoors in weatherproof boxes, the LEDs have a short life expectancy and quit. !

I like the external tester, because the "test" button simply shorts the hot and neutral together which causes a small arc and eventually deteriorates the outlet.

I remember plugging in something (Christmas lights, extension cords, power tools) into a GFCI outlet and not having it work, then pushing the reset button and it did not reset. Every time that happened, I had to replace it with a new one. Most of the time, they were outdoors. I now found out that the electronics inside them got damaged by the water getting inside them. When I put in GFCIs for outdoor use, I put in a regular outlet that is also run off the load connection of a GFCI installed indoors. I always installed them correctly.

My house has a 3-gang box in a bathroom fed by 2 breakers. When I first moved in, one breaker was connected to the side of the GFCI and the other connected to load! Good thing I have thick skin. I also had switched lamp outlet that was hot all the time and I could not figure out the issue. Finally I realized they had connected the red (switched) and black (unswitched) hots together in the fake fireplace which back fed what was supposed to be the switched line. I'm also finding a lot of 12ga-12ga-14ga pigtails which I am replacing as I find them.

Maybe you should explain what a back-to-back gfci is and the problems that can cause