In article ,
zxcvbob wrote:

Nate Nagel wrote:
Hi all

am looking for a hopefully easy to obtain, not too expensive method of
demonstrating that a receptacle is GFCI protected... long story short.
Am selling house, got offer. Home inspector came through and wrote up
two receptacles as being "ungrounded" despite them actually having the
blue stickers on them that said "GFCI Protected - No Equipment Ground"
(duh) before you ask, it would be fairly difficult to pull grounds to
these boxes, otherwise I'd not be fighting. Also there are a
approximately 5 or 6 other receps throughout the house that I haven't
grounded yet that are in a similar situation, and I don't want to open
that can of worms whereby accepting that the lack of a ground at these
receps is a fault that needs to be corrected leads to the request to
ground *everything.* (house was built in 1948, before you ask. I did
update a good bit of the wiring already, just not all of it. Everything
is to the best of my knowledge code compliant at this time, and in fact
I got a permit for the rewiring I did on the 2nd floor a while back.)

SO.

I scanned the page of the NEC (2008 edition, which is what my AHJ is
using these days) addressing the replacement of ungrounded receptacles;
called the head inspector to confirm that there were no local addendums
to the code (he said no) and so I have a case, right? I just need to
demonstrate that the receps are in fact downstream of a GFCI.

Here's where I had a moment of dumbass. I figured I would just stop by
the Local Hardware Sellin' Emporium and get one of those plug in cube
testers - kind of like the one I already have but this time the fancy
one with the little button on the top to test a GFCI. That should do
it, right? Well I get it home (not the house for sale, my current
temporary residence) and plug it in to a kitchen recep, push the button,
GFCI pops. Then I read the instructions - says it may not work on
ungrounded receps. Of course it wouldn't - it probably just has a
resistor that the button inserts between hot and ground so that it
allows a current slightly higher than 5 mA @ 120V. duh!

So the question is - is there a tester available that I could use to
demonstrate the principle to someone who's not really clueful about such
things that the GFCI really works? I could use a test lead to connect
the ground pin to a faucet or something, but I have a feeling that that
wouldn't really help the case that I know what I'm talking about and did
a proper job in front of people who aren't really clueful about
electricity and have never heard of the NEC...

any ideas?

thanks

nate



Plug your tester into the allegedly-protected outlet. It will show that
it's otherwise properly wired but with a missing ground. Press the
"TEST" button on the GFCI that protects it, it will trip, and the light
on the downstream outlet tester will go out.

-Bob

Agree that the built-in test button on the GFCI outlet should work w/o a
ground. It puts a resistor from load hot to line neutral, IIUC.