<p>I need some help in diagnose a short problem in basement.</p>
<p>The house is built in 1960’s and the wiring system is very messy. There is one circuit in basement that is somehow connected to the GFCI outlet in 1st floor bathroom. When this outlet jumps, that particular circuit in basement dies. </p>
<p>There are only three things current on this circuit, two lightings and one unit which we have a refrigerator plugged in. </p>
<p>Since yesterday, when ever we switched the lights on, the GFCI switch would jump off. I have since removed both lights from the line. The refrigerator runs fine. However, we still could not turn the switch on even without any load. </p>
<p>I suspect the basement’s humidity is too high and there is a short some where. Our area has been raining for days. The meter reads 80% RH in the basement. </p>
<p>Just turn the dehumidifier on. </p>
<p>Please help me figure what will be problem. As of right now, I use an extension cord to get lights down there and the refrigerator runs fine.</p>
<p>Bad switch? I am not an electrician, but that would be my first thought. Open it up and see if the wiring in the switch is questionable or old. Replacing it probably cost next to nothing and worth a try.</p>
<p>I am not an electrician but I think you need to plug the refrigerator in somewhere else. It should be by itself if I’m remembering right and not in a GFCI. Have you tried plugging it in elsewhere?</p>
<p>Weird that it just stopped working though.</p>
<p>I have an old house that is wired funky too. We just had one phase of electric go out and you’d think half my stuff would have been working… nope! Only about 6 things in the house!</p>
<p>Threads with titles like this one scare the day lights out of me! DadII, there are many skilled DIY electricians posting on CC, but their advice would be akin to the advice of our CCer dentists given to someone in need of a root canal: you need a licensed, bonded and insured pro to look at the problem IRL. Good luck! Meanwhile, find a better place to plug your fridge - a non-GFi circuit.</p>
<p>GFCI outlets compare the hot and neutral currents going through them to their own sockets and any downstream connected in parallel. If it cannot be reset, either the outlet is defective, or there is a short to ground in a device plugged into it or the downstream outlets, or in the wiring to the downstream outlets.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. Just to clarify - the refrigerator is not directly plugged into the GFCI. Some how the whole circuit is control by this GFCI instead of a jumper on the panel.</p>
<p>There are two switches beside this GFCI and they control two lights. If I take out both light - no load whatsoever, the turning of the switches will jump the GFCI - both of the switches. I use a multi-meter and tested one switch to be functional. </p>
<p>In other words, the whole circuit should not have been control by this GFCI to start - but it is. On the circuit - the line is fine hence the refrigerator is running o.k. But something after the switch is grounding. I need help to figure out where to go from here.</p>
<p>I know there are two of them, the one in the 1st floor Bathroom is controlled by the one in the 2nd floor bathroom. there are time when both will jump.</p>
<p>However, for this case, only the one in the 1st floor bathroom is jumping.</p>
<p>One of the light fixture is a very old fluorescent light. It is possible the wiring on that fixture is leaking. </p>
<p>We spent a lot of money undoing the efforts of the “DIY electrician” who owned our house before we did, and we’re probably lucky all we lost was cash, not life, limb or the whole house. This is a job for a professional.</p>
<p>A GFCI outlet typically has an input side and a ‘load’ side and it’s not unusual for this load side to be connected to other outlets so those outlets can be controlled by this one GFCI box. It’s actually normal and within code to do so. This means the downstairs outlet might have a fault (or something plugged into it or the wiring to it) and it’ll trip the GFCI box upstairs.</p>
<p>I’ve done a lot of wiring in my house including putting in new circuits and new GFCI boxes, etc. I did it all to code and had it permitted and inspected by the county building inspector. </p>
<p>Electrical wiring isn’t terribly complex but you need to have a decent knowledge of what you’re doing, how a GFCI circuit works, how they’re typically installed (including how they can control downstream outlets), what the local codes are, have a decent test tool (I like the inductive electricity detectors), know how to turn off the main breaker, and take a care before working on a circuit.</p>
<p>If you’re not comfortable with all of the above then do yourself a favor (and maybe family and house as well in the event you do something wrong and cause a fire) and hire a licensed electrician to check it out.</p>
<p>Per the link I gave above, I think I understand the situation now. I will get a new light fixture to replace the old one next week. I think the wiring is o.k., just the old transformer ballast is fault.</p>
<p>I am pretty good at DIY at this level - have all the tools too.</p>
<p>I’ve seen the same issue arise with GFCI circuits that trip tempermentally and shut off lights and other items that, in my opinion, should not be controlled by the gfci trip. Ground fault circuit interupters work by comparing the current coming and going on an ac circuit and detecting “leakage” to ground, such as might happen on a high resistance path that constituted a human in bathtub, etc. The idea is to trip the GFCI breaker if there is an indication of a small fault that is not drawing enough current to trip the actual breaker at the box. </p>
<p>Having said that, I dont thing GFCI breakers ought to be wired to control any circuits other than the one on the outlets where they reside. As you’ve discovered, although it may not be unsafe at all, it invites nuisance tripping. The GFCI should be wired only to control the receptacle where it resides, and no “downstream” circuits. It won’t hurt anything to do it that way, but it will lead to trips that create “mystery outages” and other nuisances.</p>
<p>DIY electrician work is fine if you know what you are doing. Most people don’t. Many electricians really don’t either.</p>
I don’t think this is a problem, although for practicality I think you should limit the downstream outlets to ones in the same room. And they are supposed to be labeled so that you know which outlets are connected to the GFCI.</p>
<p>I’ve had GFCI breakers go bad, where they trip under conditions that they shouldn’t. So you might consider replacing it.</p>
I don’t know why you’re saying this because that’s not the normal practice (i.e. limiting it to only its own receptacle) and it’s the sole reason for even having a ‘load’ set of terminals on the GFCI receptacle - to enable a downstream normal receptacle to be ganged off of it.</p>
<p>If you mean to do this because it makes it easier to find where the fault is then I can understand that but it’s not typically done because a GFCI receptacle is a lot more expensive than a normal receptacle so it’s less expensive and just as safe and effective to put a normal receptacle on the load side of a GFCI receptacle.</p>
<p>If everything’s wired properly and the wiring is sound and no issues with what’s plugged into it then the GFCI shouldn’t be tripping so it’s generally not worth the extra expense in a house to any more GFCI outlets than necessary just to make it somewhat easier to identify which outlet might be tripping the breaker. It’s easy enough to disconnect the wires on the load side of the GFCI to see if it’s downstream or within the GFCI outlet on back.</p>
<p>It’s also not unusual to have the GFCI in one room and a regular outlet off the load side in another room depending on wiring - ex: when there’s one bathroom directly above another bathroom it’d be routine to have the GFCI in only one of them and the other bathroom have a regular receptacle off the load side of that one since there’s only 8 feet or so of wiring separating the two.</p>
<p>What GGD said…we haven’t ever lived in a house built before 1980, so I have no experience with really old wiring. It has been pretty universal in my experience to have one GFCI “protect” a range of outlets. In my current house, the front porch outlet uses the GFCI in the powder room and the back porch outlet uses the one in the bathroom directly above it. Kitchen GFCI controls laundry room outlets since they’re on the other side of the wall.</p>
<p>Is a second refrigerator really required? Worth the risk/cost of fixing the wiring problem?</p>
<p>The reason I’m saying it is that I don’t like being in the dark when lights go off in the bathroom because someone wired them to the “load” side of the gfci. I understand that it can save a couple of bucks to wire the other receptacles, but its literally that----a couple of bucks. Maybe this happens when circuits are added after the fact for other things and people don’t want to rip up the walls to install a parallel circuit…I don’t know. </p>
<p>So, for my money, each receptacle should have its own self contained gfci, And that way, if one does trip, it only affects the appliance or whatever was plugged into it, and not all of the other items (especially lights) that were on the circuit. I will concede that the practice is acceptable, if its limited to outlets and not to lights and other items, but I also agree with the comment about all the outlets being in the same room. The savings are about $5 per required gfci outlet. Not compelling to me.</p>
<p>Dadx
You should check the price of gfci now. It is about $20ea. Nevertheless current code calls for independent gfci circuit in both sides of the kitchen sink just for the reason you sited. I just completed a whole house wiring upgrade and the cost is probably double just 10 years ago. It is crazy.</p>