Outlet not working...Can't find GFCI...help! (bathroom, outside)
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Knowing/understanding code will greatly enhance your ability to investigate your problem. Bathrooms, kitchens, unfinished basements, and garage recepticles have to be GFCI protected. How they are wired is somewhat of a mystery; but logical thinking will usually make for a successful remedy.
Bathrooms are usually wired together. Kitchens, and outdoor recepticles are usually together. A remote or stacked bath over a garage will be wired together. The main thing to remember is GFCI recepticle units will be found indoors, and any load downstream will be controlled by that GFCI if it is required by code. So, just remember just because the recepticle doesn't have the "test" and "reset" buttons on it doesn't mean that its "NOT" GFCI protected.
Having problems locating my gfi outlet the supplies power to the outside receptacles. I've flipped every breaker inside of the breaker panel no luck. All known GFI outlets have been checked throughout the house, unless I'm missing one that I cannot not find? The house was built in 2014. standing by for help....thanks
regards
John
Having problems locating my gfi outlet the supplies power to the outside receptacles. I've flipped every breaker inside of the breaker panel no luck. All known GFI outlets have been checked throughout the house, unless I'm missing one that I cannot not find? The house was built in 2014. standing by for help....thanks
regards
John
We once tripped a GFI in an upstairs bathroom. Turned out the reset was in the furnace room in the basement That one took us a week to find.
You can buy a breaker tracer that will tell you which breaker the circuit it on, but I am not sure that will help you. In any event I do not think it will work if there is a tripped GFCI between the outlet and the breaker.
When I put in our outdoor outlets, I put one GFCI for every three outlets. So the GFCI woudl protect three other outlets, and a different GFCI protects the next three. You may have a GFCI behind a bush, or in the garage or someplace that protects that circuit. It could be a bear to find.
After going through my circuits in my 1977 house I can start to respect government regulations more.... if you don't regulate what people do they will cut corners any way they can to get the project done cheaper. People think companies cut corners to make disposable products today.. well they cut corners back then, too.
My father's house built in 1989 was done the same way as my house built in 1977.. the bathroom receptacles were all wired to the same circuit as the garage and in my father's house the GFCI in the bathroom would cause the garage door opener to not work... because it's so expensive to wire a dedicated circuit for the garage and another for the bathrooms. In my home the bathroom receptacles are 15 amps which does not meet modern code and seems a bit half baked.. you aren't gonna have 2 people using hair dryers at the same time...
Also in my home two of the bedrooms and the hallway are wired to a single circuit, 15 amp with 14 gauge wire. Again won't find each person using 12 amp space heaters... heck one space heater combined with the rest of the appliances in the bedroom would be cutting it close. Each bedroom should have a dedicated 20 amp circuit with the hallway on it's own circuit, in my opinion. I wouldn't use anything other than 12 gauge wire for receptacles if I was doing it PROPERLY.
It may have met code at the time but had they spent an extra $500 to do it RIGHT each room would have it's own 20 amp circuit, etc.
This is why government regulations are a good thing in retrospect. Sometimes people need protection from their own stupidity. I haven't gone through the entire NEC code but hopefully they patched this so that each bedroom has it's own circuit and the hallway also has it's own.
The upside is that many appliances these days are starting to use less energy. The downside is that space heaters and hair dryers are 100% efficient and unlikely to improve upon themselves... my solution short of rewiring the home... no space heaters... just turn up the furnace as that's cheaper anyways. Just another thing to look at when home shopping.
There is no regulation on where GFCIs are located. Only that all kitchen and bathroom outlets have to have GFCI protection (outdoor outlets too I believe. I never bothered to look since it would be dumb not to have GFCI for outdoor outlets.
We had to build a new kitchen when we moved our house, so that part was not wired by me. We we had our inspection, we discovered that for some reason half the circuits were not GFCI protected. I started replacing individual outlets with GFCIs while the inspector was there. I was able to cover two outlets with a GFCI in only one instance. Then I ran out of GFCIs, so I ran to the local hardware store and bought a couple of GFCI breakers. I was able to get them all GFCI protected before the inspector left, but it is a bit of a morass. Two circuits (four or five outlets) are protected by GFCI breakers. One I put in and one the contractor put in have a GFCI outlet upstream of one or more other outlets. The rest have individual GFCIs at each outlet.
Sometimes it is funny how things get wired. We have two switches at one location in the back parlor. one is a two way switch for the ceiling light fixture. The other one, I have no idea what it does. I probably came up with some very clever idea for a switch in that location to operate – something. I forgot about that switch for many years and then one day noticed it and said “WTF is this?” I have not been able to found out what it does. It does something. The wires going into the swtich are hot, but where does it go? I cannot find anything. My guess is there is an unused outlet we had a specific intended purpose and I wanted it switched, then we changed our intended furniture layout and we ended up not using that outlet. Still have not been able to find it. (it just occurred to me that it might switch the outdoor outlets on the side porch which are primarily there for Christmas lights. I will have to check that this weekend.) Anyway, the point is, as long as everything meets code, wiring can be done in all sorts of crazy ways. Many may make perfect sense when it is done, and may seem random and senseless a few years later.
This is a major frustration for home inpectors who have to test the function of the GFCIs and then re-set. I once found the bathroom receptacles were wired in line with the jacuzzi tub motor, only accessible behind an access panel at the exterior. That one took a while...
The post by "sullyguy" saved my day. The outlet in my backyard stopped working all of a sudden. My grand plans to switch on the string lights that I had taken a lot of time to hang went kaput. I was told that they could be due to GFCI tripping but where were the damn GFCI switches, I wondered. Couldn't locate them. Opened the problematic socket and verified using a multimeter that the wires themselves were dead (no power). Before calling the electrician, I thought let me see whether there were any other sockets without power. Wait a minute! Our electric toothbrushes in the bathroom were also not charging. So, all my bathrooms and my backyard were without power all of a sudden. I guessed this has something to do with GFCI tripping because I had read that usually sockets in the kitchen and bathroom are GFCI equipped. The ones in the kitchen have GFCI switches as part of the sockets but the bathrooms don't. This is when "sullyguy" 's post helped. When he mentioned that his GFCI switches were located at weird places like the basement that had no relation to the rooms they were controlling, the bulbs in my brain lit up . I ran to the garage and indeed saw the GFCI switch there that had tripped. I reset it and lo and behold, the sockets came to life. My backyard is lit now...and did I mention that my teeth are cleaner too
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That one took us a week to find.
I haven't gone through the entire NEC code but hopefully they patched this so that each bedroom has it's own circuit and the hallway also has it's own. 
. I ran to the garage and indeed saw the GFCI switch there that had tripped. I reset it and lo and behold, the sockets came to life. My backyard is lit now...and did I mention that my teeth are cleaner too 
