In ,
zxcvbob typed:
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

Right.