Everything to Know About GFCI Receptacles | Ask This Old House

foreign [Music] so what part of your electrical world are we talking about today ground fault circuit interrupters ah GFCI GFCI which is what so it's there for personal protection so a ground fault happens when we have something from the hot conductor making contact with a non-current carrying metal part something like that I know it's a long-winded way of saying the metal box uh a pipe or picture being around water if you're going to plug something in and you're standing where it might be damp you've got a potential for current to leak somewhere if you're having a failure in that particular device so ideally the current is running through the wires contained within the system totally sealed but there are chances where you become part of that system sure if you have a chord that chassis on appliance that has a failure if something happens like that in the current Table to get out we want to have some way to protect you yeah because that could be kind of nasty so been around for a while right I mean been around since I think the early 60s and been required in some areas in the 70s of the houses yeah in terms of where it's required you said water and I think of these things of having to be in kitchens for sure yeah um and bathrooms too bathrooms bathrooms are critical kitchens we need them outside you know anywhere you might plug something in Outdoors your basement's damp anything like that garage you know plenty of other areas in the home as well so what's the smarts how are they actually working and what are they doing so what they're doing is they operate by sensing how much currents being used by a device so when you plug something in it's using a certain amount of current this wants to see the same amount of current on both sides coming in and going back out if it sees something as small as 5 milliamps of a difference it knows it's losing current somewhere and it shuts down to protect you that's a tiny amount tiny tiny amount it's thinking it went to water it went to a metal pipe it went somewhere that it shouldn't go so it shuts down so if I'm in the kitchen and I plug a blender in there should be a balance between that current right there exactly but if my hand is wet and I become part of that some of that current comes to me it says out of balance shots right down make sure you stay safe okay cool um I've seen them before but tell us how we know we are GFCI protected so the easiest way is we have one like this you can see those 10 custom reset buttons right in the middle yep that's the easiest indicator and this particular one has an actual green light to tell you that it's on and we can plug this tester in to show you that it's actually working because this lights up right there right and to verify that it's operating properly we can press that button on the top okay there's still power to the device but nothing coming out so when you plug something in it's not going to work those buttons allow us to then put it back in place yep back on gotcha and with it back on we can now show that it's working no problem at all okay so if I see an outlet that looks like this I know I'm protected that at least that receptacle is protected correct that receptacle right how do I protect other receptors to get this question a lot I don't have GFI in my bathroom I know I should have one I don't have one a couple of bathrooms one downstairs does why it actually protects from this first one will protect that second one wait so you're telling me that this one yep which is GFCI I can tell that is connected to this one and therefore the protection comes with it exactly how do I know that so if you have a tester like that go ahead and push the button this guy here that guy there so that turned that off and pop that can we do that again that's so satisfying so that's working this is working right but I know that if I were to ah so it was very common that if you had let's say three bathrooms in the house the very first bathroom closest to the panel they'd run the power from the panel to the put the GFI there then from this point they'd go to the other receptacles so they'd come into What's called the line terminal on the GFCI and then come out on the load so it literally tells you where you have to go so line is up here wants to load down on the bottom exactly so power coming into the line and back out to other receptacles to the load so you'd have your line conductor there and your lower down the bottom down there right so how this works is we'd have this coming in and going to this it's the exact same thing so you're telling me this is the line coming in right hooked it up to the place it says line and then this is the load coming out and that goes to the next receptacle and then if we turn it around and we see what we're looking at basically we're looking at what we've got here it's doing the exact same thing I know that's protected because it's the right receptacle but because it's tied to this this is protected that's protected as well and I could do another one just a thumb receptacle all the way down going down and those are all protected from that point forward oh that's interesting okay if I don't wire this correctly do I lose my protection down here am I worried that I'm not protected you won't even get that far so that's another common problem is when someone replaces these it's very easy to confuse which one's line and which one's load if you put those wires on backwards this won't even reset this will stay off and you won't even be able to turn that on this will never have power no so when you put it back in and you can't get it to reset and you're wondering why chances are it got wired backwards and then that means that this won't have power exactly all the way down yeah oh that's definitely it locks you out and keeps you safe it'll fail safe oh that's very cool okay so that's those are the only two ways I can tell that I protect it I can either physically look at it or I can go for the testing and say that this one's connected exactly and one other thing if you trip this and you don't see one of these but you see this shut off and you didn't have one of these Pop there's one other option is you might actually have A GFCI breaker in the panel instead it's rare it's not as common as these because they're more expensive but does the same thing nice I love it Heath thank you all right thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every Home Improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you'd like what you see click on the Subscribe button to make sure that you get our newest videos right in your feed

Channel: This Old House

Views: 137,090

Keywords: This Old House, Home Improvement, DIY, Construction, Ask This Old House, Building, electrical, GFCI receptacles, outlets, Heath Eastman, Kevin O'Connor

Id: oZWsk2sH6t8

Length: 5min 41sec (341 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 29 2022