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Kevin Ricks
 
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Default electrical questions GFCIs, grounding, and code


wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi there

My questions are at the bottom. First, some background:

I just bought a house with mostly ungrounded outlets. The outlet
boxes are not grounded either. My goal is simply to be able to
safely plug three-prong devices into outlets in every room without
spending an arm and a leg grounding outlets, some of which are
over a slab.

After some research, I've decided to replace the first outlet on every
circuit with a GFCI outlet (leaving it ungrounded). I'll then replace
every downstream outlet with a three-prong outlet (leaving them
all ungrounded) and label them per code. A local electrician tells
me this is all code complaint.

Then I'll have a whole-house surge protector installed. My thinking is
that the surge protector will protect my ungrounded electronics from
the more destructive surges while the GFCIs will keep faulty devices
from electrocuting anyone.

I know this still leaves electronics vulnerable to surges originating
inside the home, but I'm willing to risk it unless someone has a
pointer to examples of electronic devices being damaged by this
sort of surge.

So my questions:

1) What am I missing? Does this all sound reasonable?

Sounds good.

2) My kitchen has two GFCI outlets (each side of sink) on the
same circuit. Can I pilfer one and use it elsewhere in the house
or will this be a code violation?


Not a code violation,
GFCI are so cheap. I would just leave the old ones and put new GFCI's where
needed.
Also you would NOT want to have the refrigerator on GFCI.

3) I have two bathrooms on the same circuit, each with one outlet
and both outlets have GFCIs. The first outlet in this circuit is in a
bedroom across the hall. Can I move one GFCI to the bedroom and
replace the other with a regular 3-prong outlet?


If something in the bathroom trips the GFCI do you want to run into the
bedroom everytime to reset it?
If it were me I would put GFCI's at all the locations that tend to trip most
often (kitchen, bath, outdoors) wtihout using the GFCI feed thru.
Then I would feed the rest of the outlets from the GFCI where it is
feasible and convenient.
In your case I would put a GFCI in the bedroom without using the GFCI feed
thru, then I would leave the GFCI in the bathroom and then use the feed thru
terminals to feed the rest of the outlet on that circuit.
Depends on how things were wired as to where you start the GFCI feed thru
and how many GFCI's you will need. Also take into consideration how
convenient the GFCI outlet is. ie would you have to move the couch in the
living room to reset the GFCI for an outlet in the garage?
Another consideration is the lighting circuits. Feeding thru GFCI's at an
outlet may also be putting the lights on GFCI. It is a bad idea to have all
the lights go out in a room when a GFCI trips.
The down side of doing it this way is that you could end up with a GFCI on
almost every outlet.
Also some older homes have the smaller electrical boxes that make it
difficult or impossible to get the GFCI in there without replacing the box
too.
Kevin




Thanks!