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#1

Originally Posted By: rmoewe
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I inspected a new home today and have some head scratching going on with the GFI outlets in the powder room and Hall bath .


Here is the deal. All of the outlets in the 2 bathrooms have the GFCI outlets with the trip/reset buttons. Now when I tested the the powder room it tripped fine. Then I went to the hall bath and trip one of them. The button on the outlet I tripped did not go off, but the one in the powder room did. So I then tested the other outlet and tripped it. This time it tripped 2 GFCI outlets. The 1 in the same bathroom and the 1 in the powder room. I had to reset 2 outlets to get them to work. I have never seen this type of set-up before. I know that they are on 1 circuit and apparently wired in a series.

My tester tells me that they are wired properly, grounded and correct polarity. The GFCI outlets trip, but you have to reset two to get them to work. Im thinking that one of the neutrals is not working or they should just replace the outlets in the hall bath with regular outlets with no reset buttons.

Any ideas???

#2

Originally Posted By: Greg Fretwell
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It sounds like they are wired in series and the funky one has line/load reversed.

#3

Originally Posted By: John Bowman
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I agree with Greg,


Electrician should check for line reversal on downstream outlets.

#4

Originally Posted By: pdickerson
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I disagree. The fact that the upstream GFCI’s are tripping when an imbalance is present does not indicate line-load reversal. To check for that, you simply trip the GFCI outlets with your tester and look to see if the tester’s lights to out. If the button on the outlet trips, but the outlet is still live (tester lights are still on), then you have line load reversal.


I am fairly certain that the electrician (or Joe Homeowner) has installed a GFCI outlet downstream from another GFCI outlet. If you trip the downstream GFCI or another outlet downstream from that, one of three things will happen: The upstream GFCI will trip, the downstream GFCI will trip, of they will both trip. You may get a different result each time you test the downstream GFCI.

#5

Originally Posted By: rmoewe
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They all trip if I trip the one at the end of the circuit.


If I trip the one in the middle, only 2 will trip.


If I trip the one at the start, only that 1 trips. icon_confused.gif

#6

Originally Posted By: Joey D’Adamo
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rmoewe wrote:
They all trip if I trip the one at the end of the circuit.
If I trip the one in the middle, only 2 will trip.
If I trip the one at the start, only that 1 trips. ![icon_confused.gif](upload://qv5zppiN69qCk2Y6JzaFYhrff8S.gif)


Sounds like they are indeed wired in series. If you trip the one at the start, do the other two lose power?
#7

Originally Posted By: rmoewe
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Yes