On Friday, February 14, 2014 12:38:30 PM UTC-5, DerbyDad03 wrote:
" wrote:
On Friday, February 14, 2014 8:19:12 AM UTC-5, wrote:
Is it ok to make each outle tin a GFCI circuit have its own GFCI outlet?
When my house was built, one GFCI outlet in one bathroom protects the
outlets in three bathrooms, so If it trips, the other outlets go out. I
assume there is not a disadvantage other than cost to have each bathroom
have its own GFCI outlet even if it is on the same circuit?
Yes and no. AFAIK, you're not supposed to have a GFCI on
a circuit that already has a GFCI.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "a circuit".
I consider a circuit to be a number of devices that are all controlled by
the same breaker. Is that wrong? If it's not, then don't you have multiple
GFCI's on the same circuit in your picture below? It looks like all of the
GFCI's are sourced from the same breaker. I'm not saying your picture is
wrong, I'm just questioning how the picture below relates to your words
from above.
If you are saying that you shouldn't have _redundant _GFCI's (a GFCI
connected to the load side of an upstream GFCI) then I agree, but that's
different than "not supposed to have a GFCI on a circuit that already has a
GFCI".
Yes, the above is what I meant. You're right, the way I
worded it, it was misleading. In the OP's case if he just put
another GFCI in the second bathroom, it would be downstream from
the first GFCI in the first bathroom. That is what I was
addressing.
Could you clarify that for me?
So, if I understand it
correctly, what you'd like to have is one GFCI in each bathroom.
That GFCI in turn would protect the other downstream receptacles
in that bathroom. That would be easy to do if you were wiring from
scratch. To do it now, you have to get a non GFCI circuit into
the second bathroom. I can see two ways to do that.
1 - Run a new circuit.
2 - Find where the first receptacle in the second bathroom is
tied into the GFCI chain in the first bathroom. Have each
receptacle in the first
bathroom have it's own GFCI receptacle, ie don't use the load
side of any of them, up until where the branch point is going
to bath 2. Just pass the line side through to each
receptacle up to the point that the second bathroom is connected.
If there are other outlets down the line, from that point on,
they could be connected to the load side of the last GFCI.
=====gfci rec bath 1
||
||============gfci rec bath1
||
||=============gfci rec bath1 load side=======rec====rec
||
||
||
||
gfci bath2 rec/load side=========rec===rec
Just to be clear, this diagram assumes that the 2nd bathroom is not
connected directly to the load side of the first GFCI, right?
Right. I wanted to show the more general case. We don't know
where it's connected. If it's connected to the last of 4 GFCI's
in the first bath, then he'd need 4 GFCI receptacles in the first
bathroom. In the example, he needs two.
If it is,
then those first 2 "gfci rec bath 1" are not needed. I say that just in
case the OP missed that subtle point.
Yes, if bath 2 ties in at GFCI one, then he only needs the existing
GFCI. But with Murphy's law, it's probably tied in on the last receptacle.
Actually I just read it again and it's 3 bathrooms. Depending on
the sizes, usage, etc, he might want to consider pulling a new circuit
to split the load. Two hair dryers at the same time and you're
pushing it.